


in search of the wind

by snagov



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Separations, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:33:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24963073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: After the World Doesn't End, Aziraphale is not returned to his body. Crowley tries to find a way to get to Heaven's fast-shut gates. Aziraphale tries to find his way back from the sky (and back in time).
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 98





	in search of the wind

_"Then Urshanabi said to him, ‘Why are your cheeks so starved and your face drawn?_  
_Why is despair in your heart and your face like the face of one who has made a long_  
_journey; yes, why is your face burned with heat and with cold, and why do you come_  
_here wandering over the pastures in search of the wind? "_  
\- The Epic of Gilgamesh 

_London (A flat in Mayfair)  
_ _November 2019_

It looks like rain. Crowley glares out the window, side-eyeing the clouds. 

A bird flies over the window. Crosses with a dark shadow. It doesn't land. Crowley watches it, casting off into the distance over the plane trees of Berkeley Square. It's hard to see what sort of bird it is, white or black, raven or dove. The white clouds and the play of the bird's shadow. His mouth presses into a sharp line, unsettled and uneasy. Ovid once told us that crows were harbingers of rain. (Crowley had never liked Ovid, piss-sop of a man. Birds don't tell you a thing about rain.) He sniffs, tilts his face up toward the sky, the greyheavy clouds. It does look like rain though. Just a coincidence. Just happenstance. 

Peel the jacket off, drop the mobile on the table. He moves slowly through the flat with whiskey-tangled legs, biting his lip, menacing a plant or two. He's home for a reason. There's a task here. There's something he needs to do. 

It had come to him in the pub. Sitting there with a bottle of open booze somewhere on Red Lion Street. Sitting there, just a hellthing in a regret of a pub, slowly replacing his bodily fluids with whiskey. He had been very drunk. Yes, he had been very very very drunk and the whiskey had sat sour in his mouth, tasting a bit like kerosene and regret. It is late November and the cold fall had whipped through whenever a newcomer had arrived or when someone had left. He had glared at the door each time. Frowned up at the program on, showing on the little television over the bar. It had been about the deep sea. About the bioluminescence of the creatures down there, buried in the abyssopelegic. About whale watching and lighthouses and other sea things. Crowley had watched then, aimless and blank-eyed and ordering a fifth pint. 

Sometimes his long hands troubled at the pint. Sometimes it had been black fabric of his trousers or the little wrinkles of his sleeves. Sometimes they had traveled up, up, further up, and traced along the fault-line carotid of his throat. His hair is getting long, longer now than his usual. He's miracled it to grow quickly (he is not sure why). It tumbles there around his shoulders, soft and hell-colored.

Yes, he had been very drunk and thinking about the sea. The measureless deep. The ink-dark of the pressurized water here. About damnation and depth, about the endless dark of the ocean floor. The program had talked then about the prayers of deep-sea divers, giving offerings to God with their words and clasped hands, hoping to be returned to the shore. To get to breathe again without help nor hinderance, just there with their own lungs, returned safely to land.

There are plenty of ideas that come to drunk minds. Some good, some terrible. Most useless. Crowley had blinked then, speared by an idea. Sobered himself up a little. He'd walked back from the pub through half-empty streets. Moved through the weightless throng of people going back and forth. Leaving their offices, meeting for dinner. Heading home. To the store. Picking up groceries and the mail, their children too. Crowley had slunk past the steel-framed building of the Ritz, trying not to linger on the green copper lions on the roof. Trying not to let his eyes catch on the pale Norwegian granite of the first floor, the Portland stone above. He misses it. There's an old echo of an old memory. _Perhaps one day we could I don't know. Go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz._ (It's right there. He could dip inside, work his way into the Palm Court. This dining room of soft apricot and gilt-edged mirrors. But that's not it, that's not it at all. Crowley doesn't want to see the Ritz like this. It's not the same. Nothing of the same.) 

There is no Aziraphale to take to the Ritz. That's the trouble. The trouble with this world remade and no angel left in it. There in Tadfield, on the black tarmac of an airbase. Adam had turned back from Satan, said _you're not my dad._ And then what? The red sky had faded, the world hadn't ended. And Crowley had blinked then and looked around. Tilted his head at Madame Tracy, curled his lip. He had known instantly that there was only one soul knocking about in there and it _wasn't_ Aziraphale. 

"Oi! You there, boy. Anti-christy thing. Where'd he go?"

Adam had glanced around. Shrugged. "The angel? Back to where he came from, I guess."

 _Back to where he came from. Back to Heaven, those miserable fucks. How did I see you again then? (How long before you started looking for me? How long do I have to wait?)_ Crowley had gone cold, gone dry. Known the truth of it, the bare fact of this brand new world. The air had changed and it was different. There was no Aziraphale to displace it in his own careful way (no scent of bookdust on the wind). Tadfield had curled into Crowley then with bony fingers. Hungry fingernails. This is the way of the wind. The want of the wind, trying to take pieces of you with it.

He'd stumbled to a bus stop. Found a bus that wouldn't go anywhere _remotely_ near Oxford. He had leaned back against the bench while waiting for the damned thing, a half-empty bottle of wine in his hands. Red. A half-decent cabernet sauvignon and he'd got it by the neck of the bottle, drinking it swig by swig. Who needs a glass? Not out there, not out there under a strangely clear sky. There had been nothing of that dangerous orange to it any longer. The world had gone on, been remade. It hadn't ended.  
  
Remade. With no Aziraphale in it. (He's really taken a disliking to this whole Armageddon business. What a wreck of a demon he is. Couldn't even stomach the Spanish Inquisition, now he’s conspired against the End of the Very World. ) What about free will? Why hasn't anyone followed up with him? Why is he here, left alone and silent on Earth? He's got a lot of questions. That, at least, has not changed. 

The evening sky laid out, unconscious on the table. Sirens call. Red-glare light against his greycave wall. This is where we find Crowley first. This is where our story starts, in a demon's flat in Mayfair. He's been home for several hours, drinking steadily. Yelling at his plants, screeching at the sky. Now, here he is, out of breath.

Let's look. Let your eyes adjust to the dark (he hasn't bothered with the lights). Crowley is on the floor. On his knees. Down here, the floor hard against the patella. Bone to wood, wood to bone. Alone, looking at his pressed together hands. At the empty ceiling. The light is up there. He hasn’t bothered to turn it on. Hasn’t bothered with light in days. His knees ache. Doesn’t matter. 

You don’t need light for this. This you can do by feel. This is memory and touch. (He remembers well; demons have long memories.) Press your hands together and open your mouth and let’s talk to God. Let’s wonder together, _tell me if you’ve got my message, tell me you’ll take my call. It’s been a long time. Do you still speak my language? Know my name? You knew me once. That was a long time ago. (I hear you don’t forget.)_

How did he get here? How did he get talked up a mountain, told that someone else would bring the ram? His red-ember hair spilled on the floor, head to the ground. Bent. Bowed. Here on the floor, caught red-haired and red-handed too, saying things he shouldn't say.

It doesn't matter. It's not as if anyone is watching. Just the ivy and the fiddleleaf, the aster and the roses. Crowley is perfectly aware of what's happened. He's known for a long time that this was coming. _Six-thousand years and it’s finally happened. All belly up. Fuck._

Keep going, I will tell you why.

* * *

_Aziraphale! I can't find you. Where are you? Aziraphale!_

* * *

We must talk about the weaving of things. Spacetime.

Strange thing, spacetime. Think of a piece of fabric, a bit of cheap wool, your grandmother's knit afghan. Spread it out. We move sideways along the y-axis, changing our spaces on this earth, our planet shifting, changing its position in the nothing of space. We move upward along the x-axis, the onward and dull march of time. What about the rest of the quadrant? Do all events exist simultaneously and it is only our consciousness moving through them, subject to time? What if time is not as strict in its rules as we'd imagined? What if we could bend them? (Angels can.) Crowley knows from personal experience. 

It had happened first in the Garden. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale, Principality, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, had said, blinking up at the sky. “I believe the rain’s stopping.”

The wing had lowered down from over Crawly’s head. Crawly had missed it, the shade of it, the strength and size. He felt bare and exposed now, left alone on a cliffside. “Yeah, looks like it.”

“I suppose, well, we should probably get a move on. Miracles, you know. Quite a few on my To Do list.”

“Right, right. Yeah, I mean, they won’t go around tempting themselves, will they?” (Crowley will swallow these words later. Humans always have a knack of finding more trouble than he'll ever lead them to.)

“We should head opposite ways, don’t want to step on each other’s toes.”

“Right.”

On his way out the door. Aziraphale had gone by way of the Eastern Gate. Crawly had headed west. It was still raining. Crawly had picked over the stones and sticks, stuck to the grass and soft clover. It had been easy then. Uncomplicated. The garden had been his possession, by hand and scale-belly. He had slithered through it, arrogant and confident, his chin against the blue sky. Then a voice had come out of the bushes to the side.

"Oh _bother_ , I've overshot." 

Crawly had blinked. "Wait, Aziraphale? Didn't you just - " He had turned around and pointed off somewhere to the east. Looked back at the faint image of Aziraphale. Then Crawly had squinted, ducked his head. “ Wait, didn’t you have a body? Just now? Swear you did.”

"Yes. Well, I _did_. Oh, my dear, I can't explain."

"My _dear_?" 

Aziraphale frowned then, chewing on his lip and glancing around the garden like something faintly remembered. He'd reached his ghost-touch hand out to the olive tree, trying to touch the branches. "You'll get used to it."

Crawly's brows had raised. "What the Heaven are you on about?"

"Oh, I can't explain. It would ruin everything. At least," the non-corporal vision of Aziraphale had said, chewing on his lip. "It might. I can't risk that. Please _understand_ , Cro- Crawly. It will make sense in time. But you must promise me, you must, that you will _never_ say a word about this to me. Do you swear?"

"Sure, angel, if you're _that_ on about it. What's the trouble with - "

"It could be the end of everything - "

 _Isn’t that the point of all this though?_ Something in him trusts Aziraphale. Maybe it’s the wide eyes, the rush of words. The urgency. “Alright, yeah, I promise. Swear. Scout's honor. Cross my heart and all that. Trust me." 

Aziraphale nods. “I do. Believe me.”

When Aziraphale vanishes, there's nothing left but wind. His hair moves in it, this disturbance of air, movement. A raven calls.

Crawly had expected something about _you're a demon, demons lie._ But Aziraphale had just given this strange, fond smile and said, "I trust you. You've never lied to me." (Funny that. How's that work?) 

_What do you mean, you've never lied to me? What's happened? I just met you. Where are you coming from?_

He pushes on past the garden. Out here, here we wander. Out here in the desert. The sand is hot beneath his feet and he tears pieces from his scorchdark robe, miracles them sewn-shut over his burnt soles. Picks his way across the hot desert, the sand in the wind and getting in his goddamn eyes. The sun in his eyes too. His hair scattered and the careful curls torn apart by the wind (he will never wear it in those curls again, Eden-stained). Wind, always wind. 

Eventually, he finds a cave to curl up in. Just a little something, cut there into a rockcliff. He ducks his head, tucks himself inside. Lays there in the dark with lichen for a pillow and sphagnum moss for a bed. There in the limestone-walled dark under thin strands of gypsum-drip. In the morning, he'll walk the desert again. (He doesn't know why. Doesn't know where he is going. Just knows that he must go. Every Genesis must have an Exodus.) He clings to the mountains for a long while. These rocks beneath his feet. His nose for smelling dirt and ruin. Smelling the black iris, _Iris atropurpurea,_ growing thick along this stretch. This wild-grown flower, dark as night. Not black at all, not ever black. Only this night-soaked red, this forsaken-dark red of an old bloodstain. God, how the wind blows. It gets in his eyes. The sand and his desert sweat. Drips down his face, over his mouth. He opens his mouth, licks it off.

In the Beginning, there is salt. This is the first flavor that Crawly learns. It is nothing of fruit sugar. Nothing of sucrose and fructose, nothing of plums and apples breaking apart under his teeth. Just this, standing there and biting his lip and tasting this sweat on his skin. 

Salt. (Not an apple, not for him. He tastes salt.)

* * *

_London  
_ _2019 (Four hours earlier)_

“I need to cash out.”

“Sure, pal. What’s it under?”

“Crowley. Anthony.”

The bartender brings the tab over. "You're havin' a rough one, aren't you?"

Crowley looks up. Shrugs his jangle-shoulders in his black coat, spikes a dark brow over soot-colored sunglasses. _Doesn't matter._

He pays the tab, leaves the pub. He _should_ head home to his flat. He should fumble off to Mayfair and lock himself up with only the plants to suffer. But the miracle-directed Bentley parks in a familiar spot in Soho instead, one very locked-up bookshop sprawled in front of him. A very locked-up bookshop with its sign of bizarre and labyrinthine opening hours detailed. Crowley scowls, stares at it from the windshield. Swallows. Gets out of the car. There's a grey tabby cat slinking around the front door, rubbing up on the brickwork. It's been hanging around for a few weeks, keeping him company. He unlocks the door, lets himself in. The cat too. He's got a tin can of food in his pocket and a softknock touch. So he miracles up a dish, feeds her there in the aisles between Austen and Dostoevsky. 

"You got a name?" He asks. She doesn't answer. Crowley rolls his eyes. "Look, don't get comfortable. You can't expect me to show up all the time to feed you. Find someone else to bother." (Neither he nor the cat says anything about the fact that he's been here every day since she's shown up, always with something to offer.)

"You're trouble," Crowley says to the cat, scratching her ears. "You should know that." He sighs, gets up. Brings the mail in, miracles the dust away. Toys with the collection of fountain pens there on the desk, the white quill. The pots of ink. Just a gentletouch, just a reminder of once-existing things.

_Where are you? Where did your body go? I would rebuild you, atom by atom. If you'd left anything of yourself, I would put you back together again. Beads on a string. A bit of wire. I can form your bones from clay, from ash, from dirt. Here, take my rib. I'm not using it._

Adam had put everything back. Except Aziraphale. Here is the bookshop, unsullied and unburnt. No ash to go through with a fine sieve, looking for bone. Nothing. Just this. Crowley slinks down the aisles, disinterested and distracted. Lets his long fingers run along the spines of the books, hitting them like a xylophone. There's Jules Verne on high, up there with his gilt-edge pages. This well-thumbed copy of _The_ _Ballad of Reading Gaol._

 _Your bookshop. This is all you._ Aziraphale-touched. Aziraphale-curated. (A tomb without a body. A pyramid without a pharaoh. No one here, no one to lay to rest. No one, even, to speak to.) Crowley glares at an unlucky copy of _Faust,_ dropping it moodily on the desk. This isn't the first time he has been separated from Aziraphale. This is the first time where he doesn't know where Aziraphale is, doesn't know _if_ Aziraphale is. (There had been the fourteenth century, miseryfucker of a century. Aziraphale had taken a liking to Glastonbury Abbey's scriptorium and had spent the majority of it there, ensconced within stone walls of God. There with iron-gall ink on his hands and applying gold leaf to parchment, giving glory to useless things.)

He sniffs. There's still smoke there, stuck to the back of the wind. His mind casts back. Burnt books all smell the same. That ash-paper in the air, the stink of snuffed-out stories. He's watched other books burn, far too many to count. Burning books has never been his idea. Crowley, the apple-whisperer. Crowley, who had once said, _why don't you take a bite, aren't you curious to find out?_ We took down the apple so we could know. Who burns the books? Not the apple-eaters, never the curious. Just those who had said _no, I don't like apples._ They'd made a pile of ashes from the pages and covers and bookspines too. Codices and scrolls, tried to climb it to Heaven. (It hadn't worked. He could have told them that. It never does.) 

Crowley had found Aziraphale in a fire once, there in the middle of the Royal Library in Antioch. Sunlight had still glittered on the water of the Orontes, just as placid as you like while the city screamed. Walls fell, storehouses burned. And there was Aziraphale with white robes and bluefury eyes and his skin turning red in the heat, blistering, trying to pick pieces of the scrolls from the ground. (It didn't work. It never does.) 

He'd looked for Aziraphale in a fire again. Here in these same shelves. This is the rot of it. In Antioch, he'd pulled Aziraphale from the fire and damned the books. This time, it had been the other way around. Crowley sneers at the books sitting perfectly well on the dusty shelves. Quiet and intact, mocking him all the while. (The books manage the laughter this time, there's no need for Jovian on his emperor-throne. Jovian who had laughed while the library had burned, manic and wretched. Crowley had kept his hands curled into Aziraphale's robe, kept his hands over Aziraphale's ears. _Don't listen, don't look. Come with me_.)

He can work miracles. Put books back together, libraries, cities too. But not a body. He has sparks in his touch but they only burn, there is nothing of life. He cannot make a body. You don't get to pick a body. No, they're just given to you. Standard-issue. A head, a heart, a spine (if you're lucky). Line up, sniff about, wait your turn. Take what you're given. You don't get to choose. You don't get to try it on, there are no changing rooms here. Not in this line. Crowley had never been given the chance to measure the length of the arms, to peer at the hair color, the span of his chest, to say, _yes, this seems to fit, I'll take it._ No, you don't get to choose. You take what you're given. You make it work. Sometimes, if you have enough fabric (enough skin, enough bone), you might take it to a tailor. Might say, can you take this bit in, can you let this part out?

Angels and demons are given human bodies. They can manipulate them at will but it takes a conscious miracle. It's not a permanent change. Once Crowley falls asleep or drifts off or anything at all, really, he loses focus of the miracle and shifts right back to this. To the usual shape of himself. Back again, once more, this pile of atoms stacked one on top of another. He scowls in the mirror, curls his lip. Prods at his own shoulder. It's this or being a snake, those are his two proper options. Sometimes, when it's very late, sometimes when he's very on edge, being a snake is easier. Simpler. 

Aziraphale had had a body once. Full of life and blue eyes too. Crowley had seen the life in him, the bright. Loved it, flaming and steel, feather and bone. _Where are you? Stay still, meet me at one of the rendezvous points. I’ll come to you, okay?_

Crowley drags his knuckles along the spines, thumping them like a xylophone. Gentletouch, nothing of hurt. Just touch. Let me tell you a truth that we all know (Crowley knows all too well). All libraries are portraits of their keepers. What does it tell you to find Fitzgerald and nothing of Pynchon? What does it tell you about Crowley and his secret bookstash, tucked there in a drawer at the bottom of his desk? _The Sirens of Titan_ , yes, and _Catch-22_? To touch a library is to touch someone, no matter how far away they are. 

His hands rest on the spines for a long minute. Dip into the titles, the embossed authors. Fiddle at the pages. _I should go home._ But it doesn't happen. Instead, he shoves his hands into his skinnyblack pockets, drinking in the signature unpleasant damp scent of the place. 

He shouldn't go up the stairs. The narrowcurl stairs, small and dangerous if you're not careful. Shouldn't go on up, let himself into Aziraphale's flat. Shouldn't walk across the living room, dragging his hands along the overstuffed sofa and that godawful quilt. Shouldn't wander into Aziraphale's bedroom, knowing that Aziraphale likes to curl up here. He doesn't sleep, no, but Crowley knows that Aziraphale brings his cocoa and his books here, stashes himself away for the night. Crowley should not lie face-down on Aziraphale's bed, nose pressed into the feather-stuffed comforter, trying to catch a bit of leftovers. Microwave himself a meal. He's never been a good chaperone of a bad idea. (Tell me what you smell, Crowley. Linen and featherdown, dust and forget.)

 _And so they buried Hector, breaker of horses._ His fingers twitch in the fabric, still remembering piles of ash. Still digging through. (No one had told him that they had to be careful while running. That the sea may not stay parted, that the armies will be sent to chase them. He'd gambled on the soldiers but never once thought to watch the waves, to say _look out, don't get swept away._ )

 _You’re out there somewhere, looking for me. Keep trying. Don’t stay too long._ Crowley knows the full story, the long history. It had happened again after Eden, this ghost of Aziraphale. Crowley hasn’t forgotten. (Demons, as we've said, have very long memories.)

* * *

_Rome_ _  
_ _41 AD_

He's never eaten with Aziraphale before. If Crowley had thought about it, if he'd hazarded a guess, he might have thought that Aziraphale would enjoy food. Yes, Aziraphale would love food but be secretive and soft about it, filled with that sense of angelic shame that Crowley has glimpsed so frequently in their occasional run-ins. But Crowley could not have guessed this. Nothing of _this_. 

"In Rome long?" Aziraphale had said to him, standing there next to the bar, holding his own cup. Crowley had been in a sour mood, still with the rot of Caligula between his sticky shoulderblades, still trying to get the scent of the Imperial Palace out of his nose. 

"Just nipped in for a quick temptation," Crowley had drawled, drawing on his vowels and his drink too. "You?"

"I thought I'd try Petronius' new restaurant. I hear he does _remarkable_ things to oysters." 

"I've never eaten an oyster," Crowley had said, curious suddenly at the thought of them. Curious still more at the idea of Aziraphale. His mood had already been lightening just with Aziraphale's presence (much to his displeasure.) 

"Oh. Oh, well, let me tempt you to -" Aziraphale had said, pausing. "Oh, no. No, that's your job, isn't it?"

 _"Let me tempt you to -"_ Aziraphale had started. Crowley had leaned back, smirking, watching the angel trouble over the reversal. But oh, it hadn't been wrong, had it? All the makings of a temptation had been in watching the sheer pleasure run through Aziraphale from the ordering to the last bite. Crowley had been grateful for his lenses, grateful for his loose robe too. He'd leaned forward, chin in his hand and his other hand down on the chair, clenched in a tight grip. Aziraphale had ordered wheat bread and wine, sausages and fruit. Oysters. Fish-salt garum for dipping. There had been a salad of mallow leaves and leeks, mackerel and mint. Cuts of kid goat and slices of ham. 

"The oysters are from Baiae," Aziraphale had said, pushing them toward him. Crowley had looked at them skeptically. He'd only tried a few bites here and there (he's never taken to eating), but the oysters looked the strangest of all. "You really _must_ try one." 

"What, just like that? All -"

"All what?"

Crowley gestured at the nearest one. "All squishy."

"Oh, well. Yes, but it's wonderful. Here, try it with lemon." Aziraphale's square hand had come out with the cut lemon, squeezing the acid into each open half-shell. It dripped into the already-wet rockpools of each open oyster. He had lifted one and nudged Crowley to do the same. "Cheers," Aziraphale said, knocking the oyster back into his mouth.

Crowley had done the same. The meat hadn't come off quite properly so he tucked his tongue up, forcing it between soft-meat and hard-shell. This saltvelvet taste in his mouth, this questionmark flavor. Because it is a question in his mouth suddenly, something he's tried not to ask himself. He knows the taste of his own sweat, that when it drips into his mouth, it had been salt. _You'd taste like this, wouldn't you? You'd start soft in my mouth, sweat-salted and acidic. I'd work my tongue over you, into you, bring you between oystersoft and shatter-shell hard. Would you be like this in bed? Would you devour me the way you swallow an oyster, your head tilted back and your eyes closed? (That moan, that fucking moan. You didn't think you made it, you did. I heard it.) If I came to you, knocked on the door in the middle of the night and said, here take what you want of me, would you order everything on the menu and come back for seconds?_

Crowley had sat there, fingers curling against his leg. It had all been in there, these thoughts that he had never allowed himself before. All there, safely locked up and unthought. Now, watching Aziraphale’s eyes sparkle across the table, lighting up at the pop of a grape, saying _oh this goat is just scrumptious, you must try it,_ now all the questions wash up on the shore. There’s a knife stuck in him, turned like a key, opening Crowley right up to the soft underbelly, the things he does not think. Things he does not want.

He leans forward. (Aziraphale is telling a lively story about Augustus and the parties there.) Leans forward and his mouth waters a little. Leans forward and knocks his cup of wine, grabbing it just as it begins to tumble over. It splashes a bit on Crowley’s leg, a bit on the floor.

“Oh fuck, sorry, did I get you?”

“Perfectly pristine, nothing to worry about,” Aziraphale had said, smoothing out the white of his clothing. White woven fabric. Crowley looks it over, sees nothing of the red wine.

(Things he does think; things he does want.)

Aziraphale had laughed, tipped the saltwet oysters into his freshwet mouth. Crowley had been drunk (is still drunk). He had laughed too. His skin had felt too small, his body too small. Blood racing and his something-spirit welling up in him and he’s always been too much, it might spill over, won’t it? It hadn’t, he’d managed to keep himself contained. Kept in his skin and bones. Instead, he had tipped over, his laurel-crowned head falling on Aziraphale’s shoulder. Soft, the white fabric under him like white sheets. The feathersoft hair brushing against him. And Aziraphale had smelled like salt and sweat, yes, but of the sky too. A hint of the wind. Fresh air. 

Aziraphale hadn’t pushed him off. Hadn’t stiffened. There had been too much wine. Too much. It’s just his head, just a shoulder. (He can still feel it now, burned there. Making a long memory.)

Still oyster-drunk. Still wine-lit. Now here he is, picking his way back to his room along the Tiber. He had stayed late at Petronius’ joint, Aziraphale finding ways to convince him to try this one and that one and never once using the word _tempt._ Then, out of the dark, there he is. Aziraphale. Wavering and ghostly. Flung out of time and out of space. Crowley swallows, a heavy stone in his throat. (He remembers well, that moment in Eden. It has been four millennia but it doesn't matter. Some things you do not forget.)

“Crowley," the apparition had said.

He'd scowled, suddenly feeling that icepick mood return. Caligula-dark. “Don’t you pick on anyone else?”

“Oh, this is Rome,” Aziraphale looks closer at Crowley. “We had oysters.”

“You had oysters. I had one. Singular.”

"You didn't like them?" Aziraphale asked, his brows coming together, a worry on his pale face. 

He shrugs, stares at the strange clothing on the ghostly form. The close-crop curls, the unfamiliar look of affection on his face. It's unsettling. Crowley looks away, focuses on the starlight there, glinting off the river. "You liked 'em more," he mutters.

“You never wore that pin again,” Aziraphale says quietly. “I remember that. I never saw it.”

"I guess," Crowley swallows. “Why do you keep showing up like this? You could bother some other demon, if you have to.” 

“Oh, my dear. I’m looking for _you_ ," Aziraphale tilts his head. Nods, pursing his lips in a thin way. "Well, best be off. Still looking."

" _Wait_ -"

"Yes?"

"I just left you. With a body. Where are you from - no, look at this getup on you, _when_ are you from?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Aziraphale," Crowley pleads. _Why is this important? This is important, isn't it? What happens? I need to know. What happens to you. (You're looking for me, what happens to us?)_

" _Please,_ Crowley. Don't make this harder." 

Crowley blinks and there's nothing there. Not even a shadow, nothing of residual light. Just a few leaves gusting about across the ground, moving in the sudden wind.

The rest of the walk home goes along the rest of the river. Crowley trips a little where the sand comes to claim the walkway, eroding the steadiness under his boots. The sheer gall of sand, showing up and nearly knocking him down. (Maybe it’s the drink. Maybe he’s a bit off there, blaming the wrong things. Doesn’t matter.) The sky is very black. Star-punched, this revolting cacophony of light. A sound echoes out. Have you heard a wail out on the water? Have you sung a song against the sea? There is nothing to catch it, nothing soft to take it up, smooth it out. We hear the worst of it, the worst bouncing against the empty air and water tension too. Nothing to buffer it out, nothing to make it palatable. We hear everything out here. 

Crowley tears the pin from his chest and hurls it into the Tiber. It echoes when it hits the water. He bites his cheek hard, furious and unsure why. He’ll get on the wide road of the Via Appia in the morning. Get the hell out of Dodge.

* * *

_London, A liquor store in Soho  
_ _2019 (Three hours earlier)_

"Laphroaig," Crowley says to the clerk. He's wandered in, brushing past racks of newspapers. His hands shoved into his skinnydark pockets, his sunglasses glinting in the first streetlamps of twilight. 

"Good call. You've got good taste."

"Know a thing or two," Crowley says absently. 

"Really looks like rain, doesn't it? Been a rotten autumn."

 _You have no fucking idea._ Crowley pays and ignores him. Takes the bottle, shoves it in his jacket pocket. He wants it to taste strong. To burn. Nothing faint about the peat, the moss. The druid-dead stench. Make it burn. If it burns enough, he can burn himself out.

 _I love him. (Drown me please.)_ What is the point of love? Why does it exist? He needs to know, to find out. How did love happen? When did we tip on over into experiencing love? When did _he_? Have we always? Is it new? When did it first evolve out there, as we wandered through the desert?

If it did evolve, somewhere between us and our prokaryotic forebears and their wine-dark sea, there had to have been a first. There had to have been the first human to bear this genetic weakness, this evolutionary misstep. There had to have been _someone_ out there playing catch by themselves with their laid-bitter-bare heart, tossing it against a wall. No one else to grab it. What was it like then, back then in the past, when there had been only the one lover and their heart condition too?

Love, bitter and awful, tasting like orange juice and toothpaste. Stuck to the roof of his mouth.

 _Don’t think about it._ He thinks about it. Crowley’s traitor mind here, thinking at least this didn't go up in flames. At least this wasn't a ruin. It was the ideal story, the best kind of love. The one that never starts. 

* * *

_The Kingdom of Wessex  
_ _537_

Tell me, what is the difference between a stain or a dye beyond want? A stain shows up, unwelcome and empty-handed, presses itself in undesired. Uninvited. Dyes are different, still will change the fabric, mark it, claim it, yes. But we invite the dye in, fix it there to last forever. We apply a dye fixative, a mordant. We make sure it digs in deep, settles in comfortably (never leaves). We use mordants like an invitation, a change of address form, a wedding ring. _Why don't you come on in,_ we say, _why don't you stay awhile?_ It is about want. Red is good at want. Red gets everywhere. Blood, yes, and red wine too. That's the thing about white, it must be careful. Don't you dare spill. Don't you dare slip, fall, tumble on down. Don't drop anything. You might get a little red on you (it's impossible to get out). 

_I'm not trying to stain you. That's not what I meant with the Arrangement. It's just a practical thing. A matter of convenience._ Crowley walks along the path, kicking miserably at rocks. At tussocks of grass. Sticks, if they dare to get in his way. (They should know better.) Aziraphale had found him earlier that day. Stumbled in on Crowley, there in a grove of hawthorn near the River Brue. Crowley had popped his black visor open and there had been Aziraphale standing in his own muck, his own mist. There in silver and fur, still with bluepale eyes. 

It had been a stumble and his heart had leapt. (His absurd, traitor heart. His Judas Iscariot heart there, leaping at thirty pieces of silver wrapped around another man like armor. _It's just a stupid thing, it's nothing. It doesn't mean anything,_ Crowley had told himself. Has been telling himself.) And the idea for The Arrangement had just tumbled on out of his fool mouth like this. He hadn't _meant_ to say anything. Hadn't _meant_ to bring it up.

Aziraphale, to his credit, had sounded scandalized. "But, my dear fellow, well, they'd _check_. Michael's a bit of a stickler. You don't want to get Gabriel upset with you."

"Oh, our lot have better things to do than verifying compliance reports from Earth. As long as they get the paperwork, they seem happy enough. As long as you're being seen to be doing something every now and again." Crowley had shrugged a little, trying to tell his chest to stop rattling about. Trying to seem insouciant, casual. No big deal, just a matter of convenience. 

"No! Absolutely not! I am shocked that you would even _imply_ such a thing. We're not having this conversation. Not another word."

See, that should have been the end of it. It hadn't been the end of it. The lands are strange in Wessex. Wild. You can sometimes blame the land for what it brings upon you. This strange land that gives birth to legends and mysteries. The stone paths had given way to dirt beneath his feet. His breath had come out in cumulus clouds. And he’d found Aziraphale again later that night, this time in a tavern. 

“What the devil are you doing in Wessex anyway?" Crowley had said, rolling his eyes at Aziraphale. "Why don’t you miracle Arthur into spreading his peace memo out somewhere warm?”

"I have orders," Aziraphale had said, pursing his lips in that particular way that Crowley had come to know meant that Aziraphale had certainly thought about it (and thought about it heavily). 

"Fair enough," he'd nodded. _Let it go, don't keep at it. Don't bother him._

"Besides," Aziraphale said, turning to look at him. A soft light in his eyes, a softening to his features. "The land is lovely here. Have you been up the Tor?"

“Yeah,” Crowley admits. "It's pretty nice."

“The stars must be beautiful up there.”

“I could take you up there. Tell you all the commentary and deleted scenes on the making of the Andromeda Galaxy.”

Aziraphale had turned to him, smiling first. Then his brows had knit a little and the smile eroded. Crowley wondered then if it had been a trick of the light.

“No, not tonight, I think. Best not. No. Not tonight.”

"Some other time then," Crowley had breathed, studying the light as it had fallen on Aziraphale. The life had sparkled there, something of torchlight in Aziraphale’s eyes. He'd counted the breaths, the pulse. The interval here of the two of them and this quiet moment. Had wanted to reach out and touch Aziraphale's wrist, sound out the proof of life against his own skin. 

Had wanted to kiss him. To sink his teeth into the pulse point of his neck, suck a bruise into him. Fuck him against the bar table, against the wall. Leave red marks where his fingers had been. To bite and claim and take. A hot discomfort had raced up Crowley's spine, this strange battle of wanting to brush Aziraphale's hair back and to wolf him down like a meal that might be taken away.

That is the want of the stain, isn't it? To bite, to get to adhere. To be invited.

( _Mordant,_ Crowley knows, comes from the Latin _mordere_. To bite. A fixative for a beloved dye. Tannic acid, maybe, or iron or tin. A little something to help the stain get its teeth into the fabric, get its mouth on the white linen. To turn it from a stain into a dye. _Welcome home_ , you might say to green or to blue. _I've missed you,_ you may offer to black. _I've been waiting for you,_ you may whisper here, right here. Right into the ear of red.) 

“Well, best be off. There’s something about a holy grail. Haven’t the heart to tell them that it never existed.”

"Aziraphale," Crowley had said (he doesn't know why he said it). 

"Yes?" 

"Tell Arthur to, erm, keep an eye on Mordred," he muttered. "A lot of _foment_ in that one, if you catch my drift.”

Aziraphale had softened a little, smiling. “Thank you, my dear.”

"Don't thank me, angel," Crowley grunted. _My dear._ It’s a knife. A gutwound. He’s been waiting for it to fall, wondering when, wondering how. Knowing it will come. 

Now, he lays out, back in his room at the inn. Back on his straw mattress, his little bit of space. The curtains slightly open and moonlight glinting on his pile of armor, his little basin. And he here in bed, his clothing shoved aside, down around his knees and fucking a complaint into his knuckle-white grip.

 _Let me get my mouth on you. Anything, anything. Just need to get a little something in my stomach. Take the edge off._ Crowley is desperate and miserable. _I cannot._ (You can’t argue with clay and spit. His too-human body, the hot-brand of his fuckstupid cock, desperate and ruined. _Touch me._ ) How do you reason with yourself? His hand there, curled about. He focuses on something soft. Nameless and faceless things, sexless arms and legs and mouths too. Disembodied, just the idea of it. _That’s nice._ (It isn’t.) Here, this pleasuretouch, this ride of nothing. The doldrums of fucking his fist and trying not to think about the gentle-mouthed angel out there.

 _Don’t think about it._ (He thinks about it. How would it go? _I would take you up the hill, up there, we'll go past the water. There are apple trees there, they call it the Isle of Apples. They say the veil between worlds is thin there, between earth and heaven and hell probably too. It's not but it's close to the sky, it's closer than anywhere else around. I would tell you anything you wanted about the stars. Where they came from, what they're made of. Which ones are mine._ )

He comes in his fist, in a shipwreck, in a ruin. Shoves his other hand in his mouth to keep silent. Bites down. Wrecks the bed, wrecks his skin (bleeds a little, blaming his teeth). Lays soaked and rotten in the sheets, his hair damp against his neck. 

Get yourself together. Get up. Fix the bed, fix the clothes. Wash your hands. Crowley splashes water on his face too, trying to cool himself down. Trying to wash the sweat away. He likes the way his shadow blackens the bowl where he stands in front of the window. The earth is beautiful but godly, made by celestial hands. Not his. He doesn’t get to claim it. He thinks of the sunlight traveling at 186,000 miles per second to get here and blocked by his momentary movement into that spot on the Earth. This is his little interruption, his little thing to claim. He can take the light (the earth doesn't get to keep it).

There's a sudden gust of wind in the curtains, ruffling them. Crowley turns, quirking a brow, wiping his damp hands on his breeches. 

"Oh, still not right," Aziraphale blinks. "Wait, where is this?" A familiar sound, dropped in. It's been centuries since this has happened. Crowley blinks at the gauze-vision of Aziraphale there, this nothing of him to grab, nothing to hold on to. 

"You can't just _barge_ in here without so much as a knock, Aziraphale!"

"Is this Wessex?" Aziraphale blinks, turning around in the little room. "It's been so long. I forgot how _damp_ it really was.”

"Yes, this is _bloody fucking Wessex_ ," Crowley grunted, crossing his arms. (Heart racing, thankful for the measure of timing. That Aziraphale did not stumble in any earlier.) "Wait, can you feel the damp?"

"It must just be that damp." 

"Huh, that's Wessex for you then, I guess." 

Aziraphale nods. Still looking around. "I always wondered where you were staying here, what you did when I wasn't - "

"Around?" Crowley asks, spiking a dark brow. He can feel the tension in his shoulders, runs a nervous hand through his iron-oxide hair. 

"Yes," Aziraphale says, looking straight at him. Holding the measure of his stare. _Why are you looking at me like that? What is it, why is it different? Why do I feel like we're about to catch fire, like you're about to say something and it'll change everything? Like the air will disappear (like I might drown)?_ Crowley stands there, there in his dark tunic, his dark breeches. There with his hands curled at his sides, an interruption in the little moonlight. 

Aziraphale comes slightly closer, an ache across his phantom-face. An ache that cannot be touched, cannot be wiped away. His hand starts to come up, to move toward Crowley's arm. It passes right through. 

They both look down at the expected touch (never on earth here arriving). 

"How long?" Crowley asks, low and rough. It is the only question. The only true question. _How long before I lose you? How long do I get to keep you (whatever that might mean)?_

Aziraphale fidgets. "You know I can't tell you that."

"Aziraphale."

"I'll make it right, my dear. I promise you."

 _How long do I have to go knowing that I'll lose you?_ He looks at the world through the window. At the sky. No one looks back. This is the trouble with falling in love. Don't look back, don't turn around. You cannot go back there, back to the start. You cannot scribble out your heart. Cannot erase it. Don't look back, all you'll do is get salt in your mouth. Remember Lot's wife (she didn't even leave her name).

It feels so hard to breathe, as if he is drowning. As if there is ash in his lungs and smoke in the air. Thank Someone he doesn't need to.

Wind in the curtains again. When he looks back, the room is empty.

* * *

  
_Soho, London_  
_2019 (Two and a half hours earlier)_

He's still sitting outside the Soho liquor store.

The lights are red and orange. Red and orange from a neon sign that hasn't changed much in fifty _fucking_ years. It had been there in 1967, it is there still now. There is a bottle between his thighs. But it is not 1967 and the bottle is full of scotch and there is no one in the bare-leather passenger seat. He's alone. The Bentley sits in park. Crowley has cut the engine. The silence sits impossibly heavy, leaning up against the windows. He should turn the radio on. (He doesn't turn the radio on.) 

_You’ve got a lot of nerve._ Crowley doesn’t name who he’s talking to. He doesn’t need to. He talks to Her all the time. Just talking. (It isn’t praying unless you put your hands together, unless you bow your head. He stares at the sky, mouth hardset. He always looks upward when he talks to Her. He won’t bow his head.) _Did you ever love him? Did you ever love anyone? You’ve got a shit way of showing it. Did you hear that? (Good. I want you to.)_

Crowley shifts miserably in his seat. Adjusts the dark sunglasses. 

He could take off. Drive until there's nowhere to go any longer. The Bentley will curl up around him, a sleekblack exoskeleton. A ribcage for the thump of him. Yes, drive until you get to the cliffs, drive until you go off the cliffs, crash into the sea. The sea will take you, swallow you down, covered twice over. Car and water alike. But that won't matter, won't last (he'll just wind up here, back where he started). No, it's just his Grendel-mind again, pulling him down by the ankles.

 _Tell me. Just riddle me this. When was the last time you actually talked to anyone? Do you know what they’re like up there? Down there? Have you looked? Was this the fucking Plan? Even us? What’s the point, why? I hope you’re fucking entertained. Leave us to our ratcages. Let us be. (Give him back.)_ This is the way it is when you step on Heaven's toes. (He knows better, Crowley has always known better. Heaven always gets the last word. Gilgamesh and Enkidu had slain Humbaba and paid for it. They'd stopped Armageddon. Someone's got to give, someone's got to pay.)

Don't think about Aziraphale. _Where are you right now? Are you with me? Another me? Myself in the past. (Don't listen to me, to anything I said. I was drunk. I was stupid. I wasn't thinking. Don't let me fuck this up.)_ He should go home, get out of here. He looks up, blinks. His heart races. That damn red-orange light catches on the windows of the bookshop, bright and looking like pale fire.

So turn the key, turn the engine on. Crowley puts _Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars_ on, waiting for _Five Years_ to open. And the speakers ring out with Freddie Mercury's _there's no time for us, there's no place for us._ ( _Goddammit_ , he realizes. _It's been a few weeks_.) Maybe he'll take a nap. Sleep it off. A hundred years might do. Maybe he’ll make it a thousand. Just to be sure. 

* * *

_London  
_ _1601_

Crowley has found himself in a tavern tonight, toasting to Hamlet's resounding success. There's the smell of mutton in the air, the sound of metal tankards. The sourstench of ale spilled on the floor. Shakespeare is still on his tongue. He looks sideways. Aziraphale is there, standing at his elbow and laughing. It's that abandoned laugh that Crowley can coax out sometimes. In drink, after a kindness. It's easy to slip into doing things for Aziraphale, trying to pull that smile back out. It's harder to stop. There he had been, standing on the hazelnut-dotted groundling floor of the Globe, spilling out _I'll do that one. My treat._

He swallows a little, knowing the look on his face is too soft. Knowing also that the glasses will hide most of it for him, that the wine will do the rest. (He can allow himself these little fondnesses every once in awhile.) It is impossible to not dance around Aziraphale, to not circle him, bright-eyes and cassock-white hair too. So there Crowley had found himself at the theater, circling around Aziraphale. Revolving around him like the moon to the earth, the earth to the sun. Aziraphale-centric. 

"We've done it before. Dozens of times now. The Arrangement," Crowley had said. This old dance, it's been centuries since The Arrangement has been in place. It's settled on into their existence, become a steady rhythm of their lives. Crowley has wondered if it had either been the best thing he had ever come up with or the very worst. He'd already had a space in himself for Aziraphale to take up shop, a space on his ribcage-shelf for Aziraphale to place his heart. Now, as they see each other more steadily, more readily, as Aziraphale seeks him out, shows up on his doorstep, says _meet me at the theatre_ , Crowley doesn't know how he could have expected anything else but to fall.

Crowley had known he was falling in love. The problem is that he hadn't been listening, hadn't been paying attention. Now here he is, spun out on black ice. 

"Don't say that," Aziraphale had admonished.

"Our respective head offices don't _actually_ care how things get done. They just want to know they can cross it off the list." 

"But if Hell finds out, they won't just be angry, they'll _destroy_ you," Aziraphale had said, turning. His eyes match his skyblue doublet, his hair the same soft light of his flour-white ruff. Crowley's tongue had caught for a moment. _You really do look like a fucking angel._

"Nobody ever has to know," he managed, getting on to the point of it. "Toss you for Edinburgh."

"Fine," Aziraphale had agreed, as he always does. "Heads."

Crowley had flipped the coin, kept himself honest. (It's an uncomfortable truth for a demon, he's found he's always honest where Aziraphale is concerned.) Still, he's quite pleased to see he's not on the hook for Edinburgh. Horses really aren't worth the trouble. "Tails, I'm afraid. _You're_ going to Scotland."

A voice had interrupted. A soft-chinned man with dark hair and a pained expression. "It's been like this _every_ performance, Juliet. Complete dud. It'd take a miracle to get anyone to come and see _Hamlet_."

Aziraphale had looked briefly to Crowley. That light hope, that _please, will you_ that settled into the white brows and the set of the chin, the soft-gentle blue-vase eyes. Crowley had felt a shock of pleasure shoot up his spine, the crown of his head. Tingle in his fingertips. This dance too, this has become theirs. To give and to receive. _I love you,_ Crowley wants to say. Cannot say. Buries it in everyday things. In a bottle of wine. In a night out at the theater. In a beautiful tapestry and books too. Imported fruit. 

In _Hamlet_ (if you like). "Yes, alright. I'll do that one. My treat."

"Oh, really?" 

"I still prefer the funny ones," he'd groused. Tossed his red-tangles back, brushed dust from his black sleeves.

Now, here in the tavern, looking over at Aziraphale, Crowley pauses, rolls his shoulders. Looks away. _Don't be so obvious._ (He is being obvious, staring too much and too often. Laughing too much. He is suddenly far too aware of his body and his reactions. What is right? What is safe? What is too much? The would-be lover never knows their boundaries. Never knows where to put their hands.)

"I really can't thank you enough, Crowley," Aziraphale says, lifting his mug high. Draining it. They've worked their way through the better part of the tavern's stores. There's more where that came from (Crowley will make sure of it). 

"Shut up, angel, don't thank me," he says. _Not where anyone can hear you._

"I'll nip up to the barkeep, I think, get us a refresher," Aziraphale says, taking their mugs and working through the crowd. 

Crowley's a bit drunk, pleased. The ale flowing through him, the pleasure of a job well done. _It'd take a miracle to get anyone to see Hamlet._ A miracle indeed. Don't think of miracles. Don't let it happen. Don't toy with this image, the idea of a four-poster bed carved from oak. Heavy with red canopies. A mattress stuffed with featherdown, these wide white Rennes linen sheets. A fur-lined coverlet pushed to the floor. _I would bring you roses. I know you like roses, so I will cover the bed with them. Meet you there in the bed, your back against the sheets (looking up at me). Cover your mouth with my mouth, cover your body with my body. The weight of us crashing down, crushing the petals into the linen. Grinding them to shreds, to dust, to pulp and stain. I want to mark the sheets until they're unusable, until they're flush with us, what we've done. Maybe I'll take them with me, some kind of proof. How we fucked on these very sheets until we broke cell walls. Seal this rose-stain with sweat and spit. (I'll be sure it's safe, I swear. I swear, I absolutely swear. I'll cut the thorns away myself, I'll leave none of them here.)_

"Oh, _blast_ ," says the voice next to him.

"You're quic-" Crowley stills at the image of Aziraphale next to him. Still in those strange clothes, nothing of the current. Still not right. Crowley wonders. A chill goes down his spine. A reminder. "Oh."

Aziraphale gives him a quick look. "I remember this."

"Yeah?"

"You made _Hamlet_ happen," Aziraphale says softly. He looks around, taking in a familiar tavern.

"I gave it a nudge."

Aziraphale nods, swallows. Crowley feels sick rising up in him. "This has been going on forever, hasn't it? How long have you been - like this?"

"Awhile," he says, quiet. "I should keep on."

"Tell me." 

"I can't, we mustn't ruin -"

“Ruin _what_? Do you have _any_ idea what this is doing to me?” Crowley hisses, the wine-tension in him bubbling at the surface. He's spent all day not saying things. Has spent years, decades, centuries not saying what sits there boiling on the back of his tongue. 

“I’m so sorry," Aziraphale says, his expression miserable. Crowley, unfortunately, believes him. The ache passes between them, incorporeal to corporeal and back again.

Crowley leans against the table, drops his head into one hand. His hair falls across his face. Doesn't matter. The better to hide his miseryshame. The better to hide his flushed face, his tense jaw. “When do I lose you? How long do I get?”

“I cannot tell you, you _know_ that, my dear boy.”

"Angel, do you have any idea what this - do you know how I am - you're _killing_ me."

"Crowley."

“Why me, why are you looking for me? What are we?”

Aziraphale goes a bit pink (as well as a phantom can, his cheeks clouding over). There's a pause before he answers. “We’re friends.”

Crowley closes his eyes. “Friends.” _It’s enough, I can have that._

“Just please remember, when it happens. I’m trying. I am. There isn’t anything in the world that means more - oh, you’ll understand what I mean then.”

“So, just hang onto myself till then and twiddle my bloody thumbs while I wait.” He pauses, airs the real question. “What if you don’t come back?”

“I’m trying,” Aziraphale promises, quiet and gentle. Whispers, nearly. 

"I should know better. Angel, demon. Not like it’s a good idea from the start, hanging around each other. Lead balloon material, if you ask me. Now you’re a bleeding ghost and won’t tell me a goddamn thing and I’m so fucking in _love_ with you and you're gonna leave someday and -" Crowley closes his eyes and bites his lip. _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck._ Drunk, drunk and stupid. He can still feel the shape of the words in his mouth, see them shattered on the floor where he's dropped them. A terracotta pot, scatter-shattered, too heavy. (How could he be expected to keep it in?)

He’s shaking. Shaking there in his black coat, a pile of jostled wires. He looks through his fingers, his face still buried in his hand. Aziraphale is across from him, there and very very very still. 

“In love with me?” He whispers. 

_In for a penny, in for a pound._ “Yes,” Crowley admits. 

Aziraphale’s mouth works for a bit, nothing comes out. Then, “How long?”

“Always, I think,” Crowley whispers, “It just keeps getting -“

“Getting?”

“More. Bigger. It’s always _you_. Just you.”

Aziraphale stares at him with very wide eyes, breathing deeply. A hand reaches out for Crowley, passes through him. He feels no weight on his arm, his shoulder. None where it should have been. "I'll make it back," Aziraphale says. "I promise."

There’s always wind when he vanishes. Crowley blinks at the empty space, runs a furious hand through his long tangle of hair. There’s a tap on his arm. Aziraphale ( _his_ Aziraphale) stands there, white-ruffed and grinning gently, holding out a tankard full to the brim. 

“Sorry, that took a moment. Little busy up there.” He pauses, looks around. “I swear I felt a breeze. Bit drafty in here, isn’t it?”

* * *

_London (A flat in Mayfair)  
_ _2019 (Two hours earlier)_

His shoulders ache. Crowley drops his keys on the long table. It has been three months since Tadfield, three months since Armageddon. Three months without Aziraphale. There's no one to talk to. _Do you remember Pompeii? Do you remember what we drank there? Do you remember carving our names into the stone wall there, right behind the baths? (I do. It's still there.)_

He pulls the cupboards open. The refrigerator. Stares aimlessly into it. There's nothing to eat. Nothing of substance, not that he's ever really cared. He doesn't want this. Not the jar of preserved lemons, not the months-old half-empty jar of kalamata olives. There's a box of dried pasta, there's a bag of flour. Half a stick of butter. A desiccated piece of garlic. Nothing, nothing to eat. 

Crowley shuts the refrigerator. Leans against it for a bit. Gets the bottle of whiskey from his pocket. Light catches on something on his sleeve. He looks closer. It's white. A white hair. Angel-light. He picks it up between two longform fingers and holds it to the light. It seems strange that he can have a piece of Aziraphale, a part of his body, and nothing else. There are millions of cells here, just in this bit of spider-silk hair. If you drill down, deep down, there are endless copies of Aziraphale's DNA. Crowley stares at it, holding a recipe book in a bit of hair. _It's all of you and nothing of you._

 _How many places have I looked for you?_ Remember Rome. Crowley had looked then in Rome. Nero had been emperor then and the city had burned. It had flickered first in the Circus, there near the Palatine Hill. There had been wind and it had swept through the narrow streets, swallowed up the timber-framed homes. Sweat had dripped down Crowley's face, into his bile-yellow eyes. He had stood there, watching the Temple of Jupiter Stator fall, smoke pooling in crevasses, turning white to black. He had stood there outside of Petronius' place, sweat dripping into his mouth and tasting a little like oysters (a little like maybe-Aziraphale). _Where are you? I can't find you. Tell me you're not in Rome. Tell me you nipped out._

(It had been fine then. Perfectly fine. Aziraphale had arrived days later, fresh from Noricum, still with the lavender-gentle smell of saliunca stuck to his clothing. His mouth had seemed tight, he'd shown up at Crowley's door in a panic. Dropped a hand on Crowley's arm. Squeezed it. They rarely touch; he remembers it all this long time later.)

"The House of the Vestals too?" Aziraphale had asked quietly, not looking at him. Staring out the window, his hands tight on his cup of wine.

"Yeah," Crowley had said. "It can be rebuilt though. Can't be _that_ hard with a bit of help, if you ask me." (He had made space then for a quiet miracle, trying to put something back to rights.)

"But _you_ were fine, right? You weren't hurt. By the fire." Aziraphale had turned back, a strange curve to his brow, a peculiar set to his mouth.

"Yeah, angel," Crowley had breathed, "Just peachy." 

* * *

_St. James Park  
_ _1862_

The sky has the blessed _audacity_ to be bottle-bright blue today. Obnoxiously sunny. The pelicans are there, squawking in their own infernal way. Crowley glares at everything. At the water of the small lake. At the miserable ducks there on the water, flitting between their two islands. At the couple over on his right, a scant few yards away. He's always liked this park, that's the terrible thing. Now he _never never never_ wants to see it again. Not since Aziraphale had stood here, not even ten minutes ago, throwing his little scribbled note at the water.

"Out of the question," Aziraphale had said, letting his distaste color his voice.

"Why not?" Crowley had said, low and secret. (Aziraphale always seems to miss the point of these covert rendezvous, again here making a fuss.) 

"It would _destroy_ you." Aziraphale had turned to him, but there had been worry in his face. Crowley had flared at the sight of it. _You need to trust me._ "I'm not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley."

"That's not what I want it for," he had hissed. "Just insurance."

"I'm not an _idiot_ , Crowley. Do you know what trouble I'd be in if they knew I'd been fraternizing? It's completely out of the question."

He'd stared then, the heat of the sun bearing down on the black fabric of his top hat. His hands clenching around his cane. (He cannot see them, there under the black gloves. He knows they are white-knuckled without sight. Knows they are near breaking by feel.) Fraternizing. This. All of this, all of them together. _I would have said we were friends. Would have said at least that. More fool me, I guess. Shows you what the bloody fuck I know. Thanks, angel, you really pulled the wool over on me on that one._ Crowley had taken a moment to breathe, had felt a spike of anger in the base of his skull, behind his eyes. (It will bleed out into a headache soon.) 

" _Fraternizing_?"

"Well, whatever you wish to call it. I do not think there is any point in discussing it further."

"I have lots of other people to _fraternize_ with, angel," Crowley had spat. He'd gathered up all the venom in his serpent-slither spine, all the venom he never puts in his own teeth. Let it drip from his voice, his miseryfuck words.

"Of course you do," Aziraphale had huffed then, looking a bit (as Crowley now thinks with irritating fondness) like an angry cloud.

"I don't need you," Crowley had lied.

"Well, and the feeling is mutual, obviously." And he'd thrown the note into the water, dropped it like a stone. A bit of angry bread. Stormed off in the opposite direction.

" _Obviously_ ," Crowley had mocked. (Ached, really, what else is there to do?) 

He hadn't left. Ten minutes later, he's still standing here with a death-grip on his cane, wishing inconveniences on ducks and passersby. (In the space of ten minutes, seven ladies have lost their hats, ten gentlemen have had unfortunate run-ins with birds.) Crowley just stares at the water, replays the conversation (thinks of things he should have said). He's not ready to leave. He doesn't know when he'll be ready to come back.

It's always been _their_ park. Ever since Charles II had put some care into it and opened it to the public. Back then, two-hundred-odd years ago, there had been crocodiles here and camels too. An elephant even. Aziraphale had loved the formal gardens, kept in the French style. (The park had been a bit infamous then, notorious for clandestine meetings. Lechery and lasciviousness. Crowley always wondered how much Aziraphale knew. Wondered if he'd ever participated. _Or are you perfectly innocent? Who's touched you? I need to know, tell me what you've done. What you like. Invite me there at night, in the dark. There's a clutch of black mulberry trees, Morus nigra, right there next to that lake you love so much. I'll shove you up against the bark and sink to my knees so fast. It'll be dark. No one to watch us, no one to care. Take my hat off, toss it. Get your fingers in my hair. Pull, I want you to pull. I'll get you in my mouth, suck you into me. See if you taste like oystersalt. You'll have your fingers in my hair and you'll push your head back into the bark, the leaves, smash the mulberries. Your hair will be covered with red juice. Maybe you'll taste it. Maybe you'll wipe it off from your skin and it'll mix with your sweat and you'll put your fingers on my lips and I'll swallow those in too._ )

Crowley shivers, glares at the mulberry trees. There had been a leper hospital here once. Now just this rotten green grass, these pissfuck trees. This godforsaken pond reflecting the relentless cheer of the sky. 

He knows it's happened again without turning around. He knows by the certain feel of the wind, the change in the air. Displaced in a different way. He doesn't move. _Not now, angel. Read the room._ Crowley glares at the water. Glares at the bread floating on the skinsurface, plucked up by ducks. 

"I should have trusted you," Aziraphale says.

"Yeah, well. You didn't." _You should have. Maybe I can stop this. How did you end up here, showing up like a ghost? How long will you be like this? (Will you ever make it back?)_ Crowley doesn't look over his shoulder, doesn't glance. Doesn't want to see the ghostfade of Aziraphale's wavering image, the grass and the trees peeking through the sheerness of him. It's too much. He doesn't look. 

"I will." Said quiet, low. Somehow that's worse. 

"Not enough to keep yourself in a body. Or in _time_ ," Crowley grits. "I am _trying_ to help you."

"That was for me?" Aziraphale asks. Crowley can hear the surprise in the words. Can hear the blink of the eyes. He tears another piece from the bread that was in his pocket, throws it at the ducks. "The holy water."

"Who the _bloody fuck else_ would it be for? The only possible way you're fucked like this is if one of our respective sides makes a go at us. At you. Whatever. I can get hellfire. Make it. I can fucking spit it out of my mouth if I want. So, fine. But you won't tell me what happened, so I need to cover my bases."

“ _Oh_ , Crowley," Aziraphale whispers. That hand again, trying to land on his arm. _Don't. Don't touch me, don't try. Don't make me forgive you just yet (I already have, I was never angry). Don't feed me this fucking hope, not when you've just thrown me in the water. Not when you've taken the pebble of me out of your boot and said 'how did this get here?', tossed me in the lake. Don't, don't, don't be gentle with me. (I'll just keep hoping then, I'll just keep showing up at your door. Don't feed me any of your bloody kindness, I cannot.)_

"This isn't it either, your clothes -" Crowley gestures at the strange getup, trying to derail his godforsaken thoughts. This instead, the question of clothing. The question of time. The strange cut to the coat, to the trousers. Not his time, no, but closer. He remembers what Aziraphale had worn today. The way the coat was almost this coat. The cravat was almost this one. Far too similar, far too close for comfort. 

_Tell me when. Tell me how long._

"No, this isn't." Aziraphale wavers a little. 

"Then get going," Crowley hisses, turning back to the water. "Get out of here. Go find me. Future me. Whatever that is."

"Yes, I - "

"How long?"

"I cannot -" 

“Yeah, right. You can’t tell me. I know.”

And he is white-knuckled and dangerous, trembling. Gripping the snake-headed cane tight enough to break it. "Well, if you're gonna be lost out there, fucked off somewhere, trapped in time, tell me how to find you. Where are you? Wherever you are, I'll come to you. Okay?"

"My dear, I must tell you, I'm sorry. I should have trusted you, please forgive me."

He closes his eyes. Still the sun on his black jacket, still too warm. (It should be raining, a day like today. A miseryday.) "Nothing to forgive, angel," he offers. The truth of the matter. Nothing to forgive. There never has been.

There's the wind again. Crowley doesn't bother to look, he knows there's nothing there but air. He turns and starts walking. Kicks at rocks. Nearly trips over a poorly faring patch of dusty miller. _Senecio cineraria_. He'd bent then, leaning over the plant, his fingers fanning over the soft leaves and their dusting of soft white-wool hair. _Someone's doing a pisspoor job looking after you._

“I’m not taking you home,” he hisses to the miserable plant. But it sits there, drooping and withering in the sun, little hope for recovery. Crowley sighs, miracles it from the ground into a sudden terracotta pot, tucks it under his blackjacket arm. “What would I even do with a _plant_ in my place? I’m not the nurturing type, capisce?”

He walks on past the pond. Past the water lilies and the duckweed too. A scowl on his hellface and a little white-leaved plant tucked safe under his arms. Crowley had been a gardener once (some things you do not forget). 

* * *

_London (A flat in Mayfair)  
_ _2019 (One hour earlier)_

There's a record on. The Velvet Underground’s _Pale Blue Eyes_ is playing. _I'd put you in a mirror I'd put in front of me._

His plants are shaking. Crowley stalks back and forth, the whiskey jostling in the glass, pointing out leaf spots to unfortunate ivy, to a terrified spider plant. “Why don’t you explain _why you fucked this up_?” He hisses, low and razor-edged. “You know the _consequences._ ”

Glares, looks away. Catches himself in the long window, the black sky stretching on outside. That endless sky without relief. “Cause that’s what it’s about, isn’t it? _Consequences._ Making a bloody _point_? You’ve made it. Yeah, you want me to say I fucked up? Fine, yeah. That’s mine. My fault. You gave me this, all this, you can’t just throw this shit in my head and then say _good fucking luck._ ” He paces, gesticulating wildly. The whiskey covers the floor. Half of his jeans. “Yeah, I fucked up. It’s your fucking fault. You got that?”

 _It's not my fault I was such a shit angel, you gave me all this curiosity. All this doubt. You made me. You made everything. Why'd you put this there?_ Crowley feels the tension in his neck, his back, his shoulders. The wide stretch of where he keeps his tarred-and-feathered wings. (He's a shit demon too, if he looks at it. The trouble there is that Crowley's always got something out of place, a toe out of line. You can't be a demon and love. What a ruin. What a wreck.)

An earth without Aziraphale. An egg without salt.

Crowley runs a thumb over the ivy leaf. Gently. His mouth pressed into a flat line and his fingers soft. Gardening is constant, it hasn't changed. Plants don't vary much from year to year to year. Century to century. It's always still about soil, about water, about sun, about air. He had picked up gardening in Uruk. Had watered his first growths with pails from the Euphrates. He'd loved the gardens in that part of the world, the rich greens, the crawling vines. He'd gotten rather good at coaxing life, planting a seed and pulling it forth. Why keep life stuck to the earth? No, Crowley had gotten creative then, hanging his gardens in the sky at Babylon.

There had been a king once, somewhere far back. Crowley had known him, had watched him, filled with curiosity. Tried to understand. _"Don't see what all the fuss is about,"_ Crowley had muttered then, cocking his head and watching Gilgamesh mourn Enkidu, tear at his hair, his chest, argue with the gods. 

He hadn't understood loss then. (Things are different now.)

* * *

_London  
_ _1941_

"That was very kind of you," Aziraphale had said, turning to Crowley with churchdust still in his hair, settling on his face.

"Shut up." Crowley had focused on cleaning his glasses, on trying to calm his jangle of nerves. Telling his bones that they're all safe, all accounted for (that Aziraphale's are too). 

"Well, it was. No paperwork, for a start. Oh, the _books,_ " Aziraphale's eyes had widened then, starting to fret. Prophecy books gone forever; prophecy books that should have had the decency to foretell their own end. "Oh, I forgot all the books! Oh, they'll all be blown to - "

Crowley had stepped over the scattered stones, the rubbish rubble, the church-collapse here and pried the leather booksatchel from a dead man's hand.

"Little demonic miracle of my own," he'd said, trying not to shudder as their hands had touched. "Lift home?" 

Crowley had walked off. He did not look behind him. He couldn't remember then if he should look, if he should not. He couldn't remember what he would usually do, how he's supposed to act at all. This is the trouble with not speaking. It's been too long. It's been nearly eighty years. Entire worlds have risen and fallen since he'd last spoken to Aziraphale, since he'd been spoken to. 

_Forgive me,_ he had wanted to say, _I'm a bit rusty._ (He hadn't said it. Hadn't said anything. Keep quiet, keep safe. Scrape the rust off when you get home. Scrape it off when you get out of here. _Let me drop you off at the bookshop. Don't let me touch you, don't let me get anywhere near you. I'm all rusty, you see. This red iron oxide of me, left out in the rain. I'll stain you if you brush up against me, if you're not careful. Let's stay at arm's length for now. Until I get myself cleaned up for you. I'll take a bath in vinegar. In phosphoric acid. Sand off the parts that don't buff out until I am smooth again and sealed up. Until I won't leave any color on you if I brush against you, this hand against corroded hand.)_

Crowley had pointed at the ignition key in the Bentley, started the car with a thought. Aziraphale closed the door gently next to him. _I've always wondered what you would look like here, here in my car. I've been driving this car for eight years and always looking for you out of the corner of my eye, always expecting to see you here. You've never sat in my car before, you never have, but you fit here like you were made for it. (You gave me a wing once, I can gift you a lift home.)_

It's April, still cold, so he had cranked the heat. All Aprils are dangerous, these rock-scattered months. It's like peeling a blanket off, like pulling away soft skin. In April, we pull the snow away and see the bare earth beneath (before she can reach, cover herself with grass). April, this cold smell. Crowley is hungry in that April way, like an empty pit of a stomach after a long winter. There are only rocks in there now, a bit of leather. Some gruel. (Ovid might have told us how to find rain, Eliot told us to keep an eye on April.) 

It's been eighty years. (He's a half-starved thing.) _I want you._ It's a dangerous thing, want. _Why do I have to want you? Like this. I could be happy with what we have. I am. I promise you. I'll get it together, keep myself apart. Keep you safe. I can count my teeth, watch where I put them. I promise. I won't tear into you (unless you ask). How did I once go millennia without you?_ Eighty years. Crowley doesn’t have any pride. He’s slithered past the bookshop so many times, so incredibly many times. Checking up. Making sure it’s still there, that there’s still a cottonstuff head pottering about the shelves. _That you're still safe. Still sound. (All that really matters.)_

"We're here," Crowley had said, pulling up to Soho, pulling them up to the shop.

"After you," Aziraphale had said in a hushed voice, sounding thought-thick and preoccupied. They'd found themselves settled as they had always once done, there in the back room of the bookshop with glasses in their hands. Aziraphale had poured heavy, breaking out an ancient case of wine. 

Almost too familiar. Almost too easy.  
  
"Thank you," Aziraphale had said, looking up suddenly, biting the inside corner of his lower lip. "Thank you for the books." There is a strange wobble to him, a strange look to his seashine eyes. The way he had leaned in too much, there from the armchair to the sofa. The way he had tried to brush Crowley's hand when he passed the wine. 

"I should get back," Crowley had said, his nervous hand rubbing the inside of his thigh, the curve of his kneecap. 

"You could stay," Aziraphale countered, focusing on his wine. The cadence of his voice had been off, everything very very off. Too heated, too unsteady. Crowley's blood had sung out in complicated rhythm. _Yes,_ it said. _No,_ it said. _You're drunk, angel. You're drunk and it's been a strange day and a long eighty years._ (Not like this. Crowley knew well enough what was being offered, that it wouldn't be offered sober. That if they sobered up, the offer would be withdrawn, taken off the table. Not like this.)

"Can't stay. You'll be alright, yeah? Just, you know, try not to broker any deals with Nazis for a bit."

"You always do watch out for me."

Crowley had squirmed. "Eh, well, you know. Bit boring when you're not around, that's how it is. Really it's just me being selfish." _Incredibly selfish, I just want you here. Around. In one piece, safe and not drawing attention. Safe, where I can stand in your light. Where I might get to look at you, borrow the image of you and keep it inside me for a while. It's selfish the way that I love you (I don't share it, don't get to share any of it)._

"You're sure you can't stay?" There had been some measure of hope in Aziraphale's eyes then. Silently imploring him to change his mind, to say _no, I was wrong, I have all the time in the world. I'll stay._

"Yeah, angel," Crowley had breathed, eyes heavy on the flush on Aziraphale's skin. The coaxed red and the palefire hair. The open door eyes, the way Aziraphale had dragged his thumb over the winestem. Over and over and over again ( _the way you would on my cheek, my skin, if you dropped your hand there, unzipped my trousers_ ). "Yeah, I'm sure."

Crowley had shut the bookshop door gently behind him and slammed the car door. He shudders here, now alone in the car. Now alone at the wheel. Lets the wildrun of his nerves take over. He's tried to be calm, tried to keep still. Now he shatters a little (he'll tape himself together after). Thinking of Aziraphale, whole and in one piece, still here. Still in a body. Crowley looks at his hand, shaking on the steering wheel. He's kept himself calm on the outside. Now here, alone and fracturing, watch his hands shake on the dashboard, on the gearshift.

It's too easy to crack apart here. Still with bombed church shards in his pockets, dust on the brim of his hat. Knowing what lust sounds like on Aziraphale's tongue. That same tongue asking him to stay the night, asking to anoint him as a bedsharer, as someone who might be worthy enough of touch. Someone who might be worthy enough to be pushed down into sheets, ground against a pillow. There could be oil (any oil on Aziraphale's hands would be holy oil, any service to Aziraphale is a holy ceremony). Anoint him clean and worthy, anoint with angelic touch, could have been loved for a night. Known the feel of it, burnt clean by blessed things.

"How did you know?" A voice asks. 

"Jesus fucking Christ," Crowley yelps, glancing up at the ghostpale figure in the passenger seat. "Warn a guy before you just _pop_ in unannounced like that."

Vision-Aziraphale doesn't respond. "How did you know about the church? The rendezvous?"

"Look, when you hear that the Nazis have an in with a load of books of prophecy - I mean, how many other fussy antiquarian booksellers with a thing for Nostradamus do you really think there are?"

"Thank you. Really, for the books. I never really thanked you."

"Shut up," Crowley mutters. But he is looking at the cut of Aziraphale's coat, looking at the tartan bowtie. The waistcoat. They are not the same, no. But too similar, too much. He swallows. "Is it?"

Aziraphale shakes his head. "No, not - not now. Yet."

"It's close." _Don't let me wander in the desert alone._

"I can't tell you."

“I know. I’ll stop asking," Crowley says miserably, sinking back in his seat, letting the fedora tip forward and darken his face. "Sorry, I will..”

"I'll make it better. I swear, my dear. I swear."

Crowley looks at his hand, still twitching on the steering wheel. _Get yourself together. Shake it off. Get yourself under some damn control._ "Tell me something else then."

"If I can."

"Back there, in the shop. You asked me to stay. What were you - what did you -"

Even without any color to him, Aziraphale seems to blush. The cloud of his face darkens a little, pulls a little cumulus to his cheeks. Crowley wants to touch him, to reach out. Just there, there in the other seat. But there'd be nothing to touch (clouds don't feel like a thing). "I'll - I'll tell you when I find you."

"Aziraphale," Crowley starts. _Let me down now. Don't let me hope that it meant something._

"Trust me, Crowley, please." (There is a sadness to his face, an odd cast to his eyes. _You're trying to find the right way to tell me you were drunk, that it was nothing. It's fine. It's fine. I shouldn't have asked. I knew better. I always know better._ )

And that's the trick of it, isn't it? Aziraphale had said _please,_ so Crowley does. He closes his eyes. Wind again. Wind in a parked car, no open windows. Always the damn wind. 

* * *

_London (A flat in Mayfair)  
_ _2019 (Now)_

The storm’s started up again. Crowley’s not afraid of storms, that astraphobia of thunder and lightning. He just hates it. Hates them. It sits sticky in his spine. He's hated them ever since the first one, those heavy greyrolled clouds spitting out rain. Ever since he'd watched Aziraphale going east, his heart shifting strangely in his chest. Ever since the Flood, this old drowning weather. He is tired of rain.

Crowley slinks through his flat, thinking of water. Of deep-sea divers and their prayers to be returned to the shore, given air to breathe again. _It's worth a shot, I guess. (I don't care, I'll try anything. Fuck me, right?)_

He moves to the bathroom, passing his bedroom just beyond. (How many times has he laid there, there in the grey sheets. His eyes slamshut and his own spitwet hand wrapped around his pistoncock, fucking himself like an oil pump? How many times has he remembered the want-glint of Aziraphale's eyes, the way he had leaned in, the long drag of his fingers on the wineglass? The quiet invitation laid out in _you should stay,_ knowing full well what was on offer?) At the sink, Crowley dips his hands into the cold water, ducks his head toward the basin. The liquid runs over his face, drips from the tip of his skinny nose. He stares for a moment in the mirror, prodding at the cliffside cheekbones, the crow's feet at the edges of his jealous-yellow eyes. He washes his hands, spending a long time working the soap between each long bone-finger. 

Comes back to the living room, with clean hands and a clean face. Glaring at the windows, fists tight. _So I just… start then? Praying? Like, proper-prayer. To you. 'Bout stuff. Things. Don't really need to introduce myself, do I? I mean. It's been awhile. I talk to you sometimes (not sure if you get my messages)._

How do you start? Perhaps he should enumerate his sins. (It has been so long, it would take millennia.) Yes, get the sins out and slough them off like dead skin. Start with the worst of them first. The big ones. _I lie. I've lied. I mean, it's part of the job description. Demon. (You know all about us, don't have to explain that.) You know what I did on the way to Media. Tobias was a good kid, he would never have made it on his own. And look, he was in love. I mean, that part went alright. I shouldn't have healed his old man's blindness though, that's when they caught on. So I told a lie._

A lie. A half-truth. It had fallen from his mouth so easily. " _I am one of the holy angels which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One._ " Hardly a lie, just a matter of grammatical tense. Crowley curls his lip, feeling the untruth stick between his teeth. A lie, a shred of meat, a piece of corn. He's had this rock in his boot for so long. _It gets worse,_ he thinks, prays. _So much worse. But that's why we're here, isn't it? You're not supposed to fall in love with an angel. So, yeah, that's on me. Fucked that up too. (Probably shouldn't be talking to you either. But what are you gonna do, fire me?)_

Prayer. He shouldn't. This boot-scraped outcast, he'd had the cloud pulled out from under him. Tell me about prayer, tell me about abandon. Why talk to nothingness? Why talk to a blind sky? A rock, a burning bush, this wind? 

_Look, I'm not asking you for anything. Not for me. I don't want back up there. Really, I don't. I don't give a fuck. Just put him back where you found him. Give him back. For him, even. Let him come home. Everything's yours already, right? All of it, the earth and the sky. All of the universe. You made the angels, all of them (even me). In the end, we're all yours anyway, right? So let me have him. For a bit. However long this Universe lasts._

He runs his hands over the shooting buds of new dusty miller. His sparkfingers dig into the soil a little, loosening it slightly, making room for air, for oxygen. Testing for dampness. He should water them. Crowley picks up the spray bottle, dusts the leaves. It looks like rain a little, the drops collecting on the leaves. _Go on then, grow for me._

There's the problem of forgetting. Demons have long memories but they're still imperfect. Crowley tries to remember. _I can't quite get the smell of you right, not anymore. You always were bookdust, yes, and that pressed linen of your trousers. Your cologne has ambergris in it. A few notes of clove and sandalwood. You drink Earl Grey like a goddamn bloody fish and the bergamot clings to you like a bad habit. I remember that. But there's something else behind it, that self-made skin scent of you (I've never been close enough to make a memory. I don't have it with me.) Your hair was white. Like creamline milk, like Cistercian robes. Undyed wool. Dandelion-junk, the whole mess of you (soft and windscattered). I can't remember what it looked like in the sun, the way the light caught. I can't remember the exact place your beard started. Which of your fingers got the hangnail, how you bit your lip when you were trying not to smile. I can make a miracle of anything (except you, I cannot remake you. Cannot weave vein to vein, blow the air back into your lungs. Start your battery-heart up with jumper cables hooked up to mine. I've tried, believe me.)_

"Well, bang a gong, I guess." _Get going. Get it on. Get on with the play. Get on your knees and get on with the prayer._

* * *

_London_ _  
_ _1967_

"What are you doing here?" Crowley asks, blinking behind dark lenses. Aziraphale had materialized out of nowhere. It had taken him a moment to realize that this is his Aziraphale, his bodied-Aziraphale. The one he takes to dinner, sees plays with and musicals too. The one he could touch (the one he does not touch). Red light falls across Aziraphale's face, there in the limestone-pale curls.

"I needed a word with you," Aziraphale says, looking up and swallowing. His nerves self-evident. Crowley can see them there in the tension of his face, in the set of his worried mouth.

"What?" 

"I work in Soho. I hear things. I hear that you're setting up a caper to rob a church," Aziraphale pauses and turns to him slightly further, imploring and a bit desperate. Desperation, yes, there at the edges of his words. "Crowley, it's too dangerous. Holy water won't just kill your body. It will destroy you completely."

"You told me what you think one-hundred and five years ago," Crowley says. (It shouldn't be exhilarating to worry Aziraphale, to be worth worrying about. His spine sparks. Crowley ignores it.) 

"And I haven't changed my mind. But I can't have you risking your life. Not even for something dangerous. So you can call off the robbery," Aziraphale pauses and then reaches over, gently handing him a tartan-print thermos. Crowley takes it with both reverent hands. Doesn't dare to breathe, doesn't dare to upset the moment. "Don't go unscrewing the cap."

"It's the real thing?" _The real thing. Where did you get this? Did you make this yourself? For me? (I know you didn't want to. I am sorry. Trust me, please trust me. I need you to trust me. Maybe I can stop this, I cannot tell you why.)_

"The holiest," Aziraphale breathes. 

"After everything you said. Should I say thank you?" 

"Better not."

"Well," Crowley ventures, not ready to leave. Not ready to stop. _Please don't go anywhere, stay awhile. Whatever you need, I'll do anything you want._ "Can I drop you anywhere?" 

"No, thank you," Aziraphale says, his face taking on that stiff upper lip of his. Swallowing down that fond look that has become so common since the Blitz. (Crowley never misses it. Never misses a single one of those soft smiles, those everwarm grins. There is something wrapped up there in the folds of Aziraphale's face, the lines under his eyes. Crowley has never been a hopeful creature, these smiles are making a strange hope of him.) 

As Aziraphale looks over, that soft look breaks back out to the surface. "Oh, don't look so disappointed. Perhaps one day we could I don't know. Go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz." 

Crowley just watches him, there in rose-colored light. There in this neon-sign of orange and red, warming him in this fire-scatter way. Like rose petals, like a blush, like red wine too. There is a blush on Crowley's face (he thanks the red light for hiding it). "I'll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go."

"You go too fast for me, Crowley," Aziraphale says then, smashing the light apart. He nods and swallows, ducks his chin and rights his mouth into a thin line. Crowley doesn't breathe, this strange mix of ache and hope. Holy water in his hands ( _you trust me_ ). No one in his car ( _you won't stay_ ). 

He watches the white spread of Aziraphale's back as he walks back across the street, back to his shop. Crowley's hair blows slightly in a sudden gust of wind. (He laughs wildly on the inside, almost resigned to having these moments happen when he'd least like them to.) 

"You told me you loved me," the beloved voice comes from the seat. Angelic and distant. An echo from a ghost. "Once."

"That was a very long time ago," Crowley mutters, remembering the taste of wine in 1601, remembering the way the words had tripped and fallen from his mouth. _I love you._ (What had he heard once? All love stories are ghost stories. Sounds about right.)

"Not for me," Aziraphale says, quiet in the seat. There is a pause. "Have you stopped?"

Crowley holds the tartan thermos in both hands. Rose light catches on his knuckles, dances there. "No." 

Aziraphale nods. They both watch the other Aziraphale unlock his shop, disappear inside. There's a long moment of quiet here in the Bentley. _Have you gone?_ (Crowley almost expects it, but hasn't felt anything of that telltale wind.) 

"You're wearing that bowtie now. And the coat. It's soon, isn't it? You're a shit liar, you always have been. I can tell. I know, alright?"

Aziraphale doesn't say anything but he's never been good with secrets. His worrywobble lip pressed flat, his open water eyes. "I'm getting closer, my dear."

"I wish I could tell you about all this," Crowley mutters. He clutches the thermos tighter with his narrow fingers, his longclutch fingers. Presses his serpent-self into the leather seat. "I mean the today-you. That one. Not the _you_ -you. _You_ know already."

Aziraphale troubles his lip. "Oh, I do hope I'm not wrong about this."

Crowley sighs, drags one long hand over his face. His jumble of angles folding in his jacket. "You're an _angel,_ angel. You're not wrong. You aren't, promise. I won't say anything. Cross my heart, remember?"

There's no answer this time. Just wind caught in his hair, feeling almost like loving hands.

When Crowley gets home, he drops his keys on the table and his sunglasses too. Catches sight of himself in the hall mirror. He leans in, these long hands fumbling at himself. He's at a loss, empty and strange. He and his hair in the red. His fingers in his hair, picking at his jacket, trying to see if that red light is caught on him. If it's on his shoulder or his back, tangled in his hair. He'd opened his mouth (always a fool's errand, he should know better), maybe it had stuck there, maybe he's swallowed the red light down. His eyes had been open (they shouldn't have been), perhaps we can find the light there. Snuck on through the pupils, hiding in his eyes and blazing on his retinas. He checks his pockets, perhaps it had dropped in there like a secret letter, like a love note passed quietly with a whisper of _open this later, open this when you're alone._

No, nothing. There's nothing there. Just a little lint. Just a few shadows.

* * *

_Where are you? Look, wherever you are, I'll come to you._

* * *

_London (A flat in Mayfair)  
__2019 (Now)_

If he doesn't look too closely, if he lets his eyes unfocus, it looks like night in the Garden. His dark brown hardwood floor like soil. The greenleaf plants around him, water on their leaves as if it had rained. He can smell the chlorophyll of them, the green-ichor lifeblood through their vines and stems. There is philodendron and devil's ivy, dracaena and sansevieria. There are peace lilies. Aloe. Succulents. These past three months, Crowley has grown flowers too. There is acacia here. Anemones. Aster and snowdrops. Carnations. Mostly, Crowley grows roses now. They cover the far wall. Yellow and lavender and white. Red in the center. A spill of red roses. 

If he squints, it looks just like Eden. So he drops his head, closes his eyes. His gardener-fingers digging into his wood-dark floorboards, tensing his jaw. _Don't. Don't think about it. I've never asked you for anything. I'll even say please. Give him back, I'm begging you. Whatever you want._

_Please._

He breathes, counts the measure of his heart. He's drunk. This is absurd, nothing matters. It smells like the Garden after the rain. Roses and water and soil. Lay your head down, Crowley. You've said all you've had to say. Lay your head down on the ground, the wood hard as an altar. He presses his forehead to the ground. His hair is long now, it lays on the floor. Amphora-red, a bloodpool of hair. It falls on either side of his neck, bare now and facing up. Facing God. He doesn't look, no, only offers his neck.

Tell me the measure of sacrifice. What will you offer? What will you take with you up the mountain? Your pig, your calf, your ram, your child? Or simply yourself? Lay here on this stone, it does not have to be beautiful. It does not have to be elegant. Just this simple stone. Sacrifice. To bring, to present, to offer. (Crowley doesn't have a pig, a calf, a ram. You can't hurt kids. He only has himself. Go to the mountain alone. Leave the rest, you cannot take it with you.) A burnt offering. He doesn't need fire. He's already damned. Scorched. Smoking still from his fingertips, hot to the touch. _Here I am, offering everything to you. Take me as I am (take me if you must)._

"If this is my fault, if this is me. Just. Please. I'm sorry. I won't. Please." _Forgive me (if that's what it will take, if that's what you want). Look, I don't need forgiveness. Don't want it. But what about mercy? You made me this way, jagged and curious. Aren't I still yours? Aren't we all your children? Can't you give a scrap of mercy just this once? (Give him back, let him come home.)_

* * *

_London  
_ _Three months ago_

_The last time I saw you, there in your body, I asked you to run away with me. (The last time I saw you, you said no.)_

Tell me about a bandstand at dusk. Tell me the measure of twilight, of the disappearing sun. There is a bandstand under a grey-blue sky. These gathered clouds, these early-turn leaves, already yellow on the branches. Though it's only August, they're beginning to fall. 

"You can't _leave_ , Crowley. There isn't anywhere to go," Aziraphale says. Crowley turns back. Aziraphale's still standing there, still waiting. The dusk just falling all over his face. 

"It's a big universe," Crowley says, spreading his hands out to the sky. Offering the wideness of his arms and his wingspan too. "Even if this all ends up in a puddle of burning goo, we can go off together."

"Go off together?" Aziraphale says, doubt heavy on his tartan self, his slumped shoulders, his stubborn nose. "Listen to yourself."

"How long have we been friends? Six thousand years!" 

"Friends?" And there it is, the forever-pushback. Crowley closes his eyes behind his lenses, his jaw tightening. _Fuck, I hate that. I hate when you say it (I know why you say it)._ "We're not friends. We are an _angel_ and a _demon_. We have nothing whatsoever in common. I don't even _like_ you."

"You _do_ ," he counters, raising his jaw. 

"Even if I did know where the Antichrist was, I wouldn't tell you. We're on _opposite sides._ "

"We're on _our side_ ," Crowley hisses it, moving forward. Wanting to flare like a cobra. 

"There is no 'our side', Crowley," Aziraphale says, casting the final stone. Shattering all the dishes. "Not anymore. It's over."

It takes a second to catch up. A heart stopped beating will still have blood rushing for half-a-second, there from its final pulse. It can take up to ten seconds for unconsciousness to settle in after the guillotine bites. We don't always realize that we are already dead. 

Crowley stares at Aziraphale, mouth slightly open. Stares at the greydusk light catching in Aziraphale's eyes, there on his lower lip. The blue fade to his dusty-miller-white hair, to his dusty bookseller's coat, as the twilight grabs greedy handfuls. Crowley watches, watches the wobble of Aziraphale's lower lip, the stubborn nose and the set of the chin. Waits for the paddles, waits to be shocked back into rhythm. (There's nothing, nothing of red. Nothing here but blue. Blue of deoxygenation, blood coming back to his heart with nothing of wind and air. Nothing carried there at all.)

Crowley snaps his jaw shut. Moves his head. He's supposed to move, supposed to say _something_. That's how these scripts go. You must keep up appearances. Someone must clean up the broken plate. Someone must wipe the cutting board down. Someone must say _oh no, you go on, I can clean up this mess._

Don't make a fuss; don't make a sound. _Yes, alright. I'll do that one. My treat. If that's what you want. (Is this what you want? Tell me, I don't believe you. You're doing it again, saying what you think you should. The party line. What are you thinking, what do you fucking want? I want to know. Grant me one wish, one fucking miracle. Let us switch places, switch minds, switch hearts. Let me feel you. Let me know. Please, I've never been able to tell. Let me know what the bloody hell is going on inside your mind, your real mind. God, please, swap our places. I want to know.)_

"Right. Well, then. Have a nice doomsday." 

He bites his lip. Tasting it there, the blood like iron in his mouth. Striding off without looking back and hissing at the bitter sky while he goes. 

* * *

_London (A flat in Mayfair)  
_ _2019 (Now)_

In the Beginning, there is light. There is light here too. Sudden and surprising. The hall light has snapped on, Crowley's head snaps up. (How does the rest of it go? The story of Abraham? The story of Isaac on the stone? Don't forget this, an Old Testament mercy. Yes, of course, _a_ _n angel appears.)_

"Crowley.” There is a voice from the hall. Echoing, bouncing. The hall light is flipped on. Footsteps. "Crowley!"

He jerks at the noise. _God in Hea - Satan in - Someone in fucking somewhere, fuck. Aziraphale._

Crowley is still on his knees. Still with the prayer-call-line open, listening for God to pick up the line. "Here I am," he says. Gets up off the floor. Dusts off his hands. "In here, angel." He's not thinking, not thinking quickly. Get up, get up, get up. Don't let him see your idiot self on the floor. Not like this. He scrambles, casting his hands out to the coffee table to pull himself up. Knocks his drink over. The glass shatters on the hardwood floor. 

"You."

Aziraphale moves into the living room. He's rumpled, yes, and a bit the worse for wear. And still glowing a little from residual angelic power. "I'm so sorry, my dear. I'm late."

Crowley stares at him, choking on his own silence. His hands clutch at the air, wanting to settle (never settling). There is a long stretch. He has no idea what to say (there's too much to say). _I've waited a long time to see you. (At last.)_ Instead, he watches Aziraphale stand there awkwardly, troubling at a smile. Crowley tries to catch a breath, to ground himself. How do you right this ship? How do you surface? (He is so far down.) 

"A bit, maybe," he says softly, staring still. "'S fine, doesn't matter." He looks Aziraphale up and down. Counting the limbs, the fingers. Making sure he's all there, put back as he'd been found. "Erm, do you … want a drink?"

Aziraphale hesitates. Crowley swallows. Swallows again, his parched throat. _Is it you? Are you real? Let me find out, I want to touch you, hold you, gather you up. Are you real? (Tell me I am not asleep.)_

"I suppose - some tea, perhaps? That would be lovely, thank you." 

Crowley nods. It takes a moment, gathering himself together. Gathering his arms up and his legs too, remembering where he’s put them. Aziraphale is standing there in the hall, eyes shining and watching him. Watching him be so painfully _obvious._ Crowley knows Aziraphale can see every discomfited twitch in his fingers, the way he keeps turning toward him. _God, let me touch you, let me hold you. Are you safe now? (Let me prove to my skin that you’re real.)_

"Mind if I?" Crowley points to the bar cart. 

"Oh heavens, yes, of course. Please do." 

He moves to the bar cart, the tumblers. Splashes whiskey in from the decanter. Glances over to Aziraphale. Put back together, down to the last freckle, the last stray eyebrow hair. _You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up like this,_ Crowley wants to say. _Fuck, I love you,_ he nearly spills. In the end, he doesn’t say anything at all. 

"I'm sorry it took so long."

"'S nothin', angel." ( _I'd always watch for you. This vigil strange._ ) He breathes in, takes a sip, leads them into the kitchen. Puts the kettle on. Brews a single cup and pushes it over toward Aziraphale. They don't speak at all during this odd dance, this tensionsnap, this whipcord moment. There is a balance in silence. Don't rattle it, don't break it.

"I can't believe you don't like tea," Aziraphale admonishes lightly, "After all this time in England."

Crowley glances up from where he's been staring at his knuckles around the glass. He shrugs, leans against the counter. It presses into his bonehip. "Look, tea's got nothin' on a strong cup of coffee." 

Steam curls up from the cup. Aromatic and bergamot-threaded. Crowley watches the way Aziraphale closes his eyes, breathes it in. If Crowley were to crawl inside him now, into the space of his lungs, he knows that Aziraphale's air would smell like Earl Grey. Crowley curls his lip like the steam, thinking of fire. Remembering ruin. Everything burns. His memories scorch him, these things he has touched with his hellhands, sparks in his fingertips. Tinder-fingered. Matchbox-haired. _I made you a miracle at the Globe and do you remember when you showed up at my door in 1613, asking me for wine, your face fallen and telling me that it had burned to the ground? Do you remember old St. Paul's? You were so filled with joy over it, so delighted. I wanted to give you something, I worked a miracle into the Rose Window. I couldn't go inside but I was there when they blew the glass, set it in iron. I never told you it was for you, the Rose Window in the east end. It was. (I was there when it burned.)_

He looks away, studies his reflection in the blackshine cabinets. In the stainless steel refrigerator. Frowns at his body (the one he didn't get to pick). Frowns at the too-long arms, the shovelpit jaw. “Are you hungry? I should’ve asked, sorry, just still - I mean, I’ve got things, if you like. You’ve gotta be starving, discorporation does a bloody _number_ on the stomach, they never put you back with your lunch too -“

“Crowley, I’m just fine, I -“ Aziraphale looks up at Crowley then, something changing in his expression. His mouth softens. Eyes too. Crowley breathes in while he counts the seconds looking at those riverwater eyes. _You're beautiful,_ he wants to say. (He doesn't say.) “I’d love something, my dear. If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Course, yeah. Absolutely. Knew it, I’ve lost some really good dinners to that. You want some bread? I’ve got olives. Oh, cheese, yeah. That’s the stuff.” Crowley buries himself in the suddenly-full refrigerator and cabinets. Fusses out a wooden cutting board and a long knife. There is sourdough, he grips it with long fingers (instructed not to shake), slices it thick. Gets out the butter, rich yellow and 82 percent butterfat. The salt cellar and the leatherblack kalamata olives. There’s caviar in there. Crumblesoft goat cheese and a nutty aged Gouda. He takes them, a cut of beautiful Stilton. Cuts slices, crumbles others. _Yes, the grapes. Yes, the figs too._ Get them out, all of them together.

Aziraphale watches silently while Crowley builds him a feast. His eyes are warm. Those brows raised like an open door, raised like a quiet question. Crowley knows that when he stops moving, they will have to talk again. (Why is that terrifying? He doesn’t know. It is. He tries not to come apart. Keeps his hands busy, keeps moving. Look, there are water crackers too. Look, see the saltblanket of prosciutto, the way it curls on the cutting board. Watch the rich burgundy of the thick balsamic as he pours it in a dish. _Come here, dip your bread into this. Into what I’ve given you._ _Taste._ )

Aziraphale doesn't reach for the food. He bites his lip instead. "I missed you," he says. Why not shatter the glass, smash the surface tension? Here we are and our stones of words too, scattered to the wind (thrown at the windows). Crowley sucks in a breath. 

"You were popping in and out all the time. You _saw_ me."

A slow shake of the head. "Well, yes, you. It was you. But it wasn't the _same_. It was a past you and a past me. But you and I, well, we've been through things. Together. Haven't we?" Aziraphale looks up from his tea, a slight pleading to his tone. "I couldn't mention the Ritz to you. Or say anything about the Bentley. I accidentally called you _my dear_ there in Eden. You gave me _such_ a look."

Crowley swallows. He remembers it well. The shock of it, the strangeness. The promise of a closer future. It's sat sticky between his shoulderblades for six-thousand years. 

"You're dreadfully quiet," Aziraphale says. "Are you alright?"

"Not quiet. 'M great. I mean, look at me. _Totally_ fine."

"You are."

"Just thinkin', angel. Just drunk. And stupid. Very _very_ stupid. Don't worry about it."

Aziraphale sets his glass down. "What is it?"

"Look, it's nothin'." _It’s_ _nothing. (Everything. Things I shouldn't ask for. Things you cannot give.)_ His breathing is ragged, it comes and pulses so quickly that he feels a wave of nausea rising in his throat. He crosses his arms, uncrosses them. Puts his hands in his pockets, takes them out again.

"You're angry with me."

Crowley blinks. "What? What the heaven are you on about? Angry with you? Why the fuck would I be _angry_ \- " (But it feels like anger, this tension snapping through him. The way his shoulders curl. His fingers and his toes, his whiplash spine. There's too much, too much _something_. It _feels_ like anger but it's not quite, it's not that. It's hot and it's physical and he doesn't know. _He doesn't fucking know_.)

" _Crowley_."

Crowley drains his glass. He shouldn't. Drinking more right now is a terrible decision. His own teeth tear at his ragged-pink lip. He shouldn't be talking around this. Shouldn't dance near it. They are only getting closer. The surface is near. He's going to falter, he's going to let it spill out. He looks down at his hands. His sparking fingers. He can shoot fire at a thought, from his mouth, from his touch. Sign his sigil-name with a smashed-transformer touch. "I'm glad you're back, that's all. Just - it's a lot to take in. Been a rough couple of months."

There's a warm hand that covers his. When had he rested his left hand on the dark granite counter? When had he leaned there, leaned across? Aziraphale's warm hand covers his, the fingers falling gently into the spaces between his own. _I can't do this._ (He does it, he holds steady. Tightens his fingers around Aziraphale's.) 

"My dear," Aziraphale says, slow and quiet (as if there is all the time in the world to gentle a wild thing). "Come sit with me on the sofa."

He nods. Winds up on the sleek sofa, the leather groaning under him. Arms and legs flung out like he's been dropped there. Maybe he has been dropped there, wrapped in blackweave and redburnt-hair, dropped here with his unkissed mouth and his pilgrim-wandering fingers. Maybe they both have. 

Aziraphale perches on the armchair, tea still cupped in his hands. He frowns then, biting his lip and looking up heavenward (there is only the ceiling, only the light fixture).

There's something heavy on Crowley's tongue. He spits it out. This sour pill. "You left Heaven. To come back. Here." 

"Yes,” Aziraphale says, hesitance in his voice. “Is that okay?” Crowley can hear the layered question. _Was that the right thing. to do? Is there a space for me here?_

“Shit, yeah. Always, always, don’t ever - yeah, you’re always - ”

Fingers curl tight and tense. He doesn't know what to say. If there is anything to say. Aziraphale opens his mouth to say something. Stops. Looks away, the worrylines of his face cutting deeper. 

"How did you get a body then?"

Aziraphale frowns, his mouth a question mark. "I'm honestly not sure."

_Ineffable, right._

“Do you ever talk to the Almighty?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley shrugs. “I dunno.”

“That’s _faith_ , Crowley!”

_Feels like blame to me. Feels like anger._

“It’s just a habit.” _Don’t you? You were there. You’ve seen everything I’ve seen. No one told me what would happen if you opened your mouth. No one said they’d slam the door in your face. Not even gas in your car. Not even cash for the bus, enough to get a room somewhere, to keep warm for the night._ “I’m _unforgivable,_ Aziraphale. Nothing really to say to them. Sometimes I just say shit.”

“I didn’t mean Heaven.”

“What?” Crowley asks, frowning.

“I don’t think She thinks anyone is beyond forgiveness, Crowley. Don’t you understand?” 

What's there to understand? You see, they are an angel and a demon. It doesn't matter what they want. What they desire. Made from God-hands, of Heaven-stock (even if one has, rather, fallen down a set of stairs). They are not human. They have never been human _. Isn't that how it's supposed to work?_ This is the difference of man. Crowley thinks about free will. It's a sore subject, free will. We all understand that humanity's got it. It's their thing, really. Their defining trait. That they can be given a book of instructions and a map, a bit of a warning through burning bush, and still say, _nah, I think I'll go this way, try this one. I like chocolate better. (Never cared for rum raisin.)_

“Obviously not. Explain.”

“After I left, I still felt, well, something.” He pauses, runs his finger over the top of the wineglass. “She’s not in Heaven anymore. I don’t think she’s been there for a long time.”

“Yeah?”

“She’s everywhere. In everything. I think we’ve forgotten that.”

“Not in Hell,” Crowley mutters. _Not in me. Hellthings._

“She’s all of Creation. Do think it’s possible that there’s anywhere that isn’t Her?”

Crowley stares. Doesn’t have an answer. 

“I’m a demon, you’d think I would know, Aziraphale-“

“A demon who loves things. You’re proof positive.”

Crowley flushes. Looks away. _Don’t. Don’t go there._ "You probably can't go back, you know. Not now -" 

Aziraphale stares hard at him. “Would you want to go back? If you could?”

Crowley curls his lip. “There’s nothing there I remember. Nothing there I care about.” Heaven, the taste of it sour in his mouth. He knows the measure of Heaven. Remember Golgotha. Remember Calvary. Crowley had watched it all, hadn’t let a drop spill. That black robe like a shroud. This graveyard hoisted into the sky, so close to the city. Where everyone passing through can see; where everyone passing through can _smell._ You cannot escape that, you cannot hide. Avert your eyes if you like, but the smell will get you. (Crowley had not averted his eyes, had watched solemnly.) _It’s not the same. Do you remember that little place you had in the sixteenth century? You liked the corners of it, you liked the way the light fell through the window. You liked the cat that came by for milk (your crumbs too). Can you go back there? The house is gone. The wood’s rotted. There’s nothing up there I’d recognize. They’ve wiped every surface clean of my fingerprints. Even the sky isn’t the same. Someone kept on with the stars. (I don’t recognize them all up there. Some I cannot name.)_

Crowley closes his eyes, runs his hand over his face. Pinches his nose. He's thinking of his head, his neck, his arms, his hands. They're vibrating on some strange frequency, ready to shatter. Ready to come apart. _Keep it together._ Change the subject. Keep it steady, keep it safe. 

“Hmm,” he mutters. “So. Oh, yeah, you'll like this. I've got a new case of scotch that miraculously fell off the back of a truck. Interested?”

"Oh, you wily thing," Aziraphale says, the corner of his lip turning up. His eyes don't smile, there's a strange focus to them. "Go on."

"It's in the kitchen. Gimme a second, let me get up."

"It's alright, my dear. I'll get it. Stay there." Aziraphale disappears to the back to find a bottle of the scotch. Crowley breathes. The lamplight cut on a bitter-sharp face and red-bloom algae hair. His hands tight around a wineglass and thinking only of the smell of rain. The smell of rain and the look of Old Testament clouds and the sound of drowning lungs too. _Don’t try to talk to them, not up there. You might hear what I heard. I can’t tell you what to do. No one told me what happens if you bite an apple._ ( _Shake it off. Cut it out. Not important.)_

Aziraphale comes back empty-handed. Stands there, just in the entryway between the rooms. Stands odd and out of focus, like a screendoor left hanging, waiting to be opened fully or slammed shut. 

"Can't find it then?"

"Have you stopped?"

Crowley blinks. _Catch me up, angel._ "What?"

"In 1601, you told me you loved me," Aziraphale says quietly. Picks up a dishtowel, twists it between his nervous hands. "And in 1967. Is it still true? I know it's forever ago for you but," he swallows, "It's still rather, well, very new for me. Days ago."

Crowley stares, struck into silence. 

"Please tell me it's still true," Aziraphale says. He looks up from the floor, eyes like blueshift, eyes caught on riverwater and Byzantine tile. Endless, time-bent. His brows are pulling together in that worry of him, that ever-rumpled worry "Please."

Crowley breathes. He doesn’t have to. He has to. _Say no. Run away. Put it back, back to normal. We don’t know what we’re doing. This could be the end, the end of everything._

The moon is out. The stars too. The candles catch the side of Aziraphale’s face. The cut of the nose and the soft jaw, tangle in cloudpale beardstart. Like sun on the water, these open eyes. Staring at him. Aziraphale isn’t breathing. (Crowley is.)

_I knew you in Eden. I wanted you in the desert, in Israel, in Canaan. I loved you in Rome. In Wessex, in London. Across the world, across the universe. Across time._

"There are _lots_ of types of love, angel, so of course, you know. Couldn't have hung around you for _this_ long without _something_. Not that love's my area, 'course. Not real good at that, demo-"

"Please, you know what I mean."

Tell me about frequency. Vibration. His bones here, dug up from the earth. Being sifted and shaken apart. “Yeah,” he whispers. His voice shakes. His hands too. “I’ve never stopped.”

Aziraphale closes his eyes as if hit. The pain of too bright. The sharp sun. The rush of light, the rush of water. His chest rises and falls. The breath. The wind, this catch of air. 

“Can I kiss you?”

“If you,” he swallows, “If you do this, they’ll know eventually. They’ll find out. They’ll never let you back in." _To be associated with me. To have my name connected to yours. To be seen in public. I'll be the rocks in your pocket. I'll drag you down, so far down. You don't know what it's like down there. It gets cold. It's dark. There are things you've never seen before._

"I know."

"I can't be the reason -" 

" _Please,_ Crowley. Can I kiss you?" It is said there, standing at the entrance to the living room. Aziraphale doesn't have his hands behind his back, not this time. This time he has his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and jacket off. This time there is one hand raised and stretched out, as if there were not meters to cross to where Crowley is sunk on his leatherdark couch. 

Crowley closes his eyes. There is a second to wait. A second for him to ask _but what about Geryon? Don't you remember monsters? Don't you remember what you've been told about me? About red things, hellthings? (I don't want to hurt you, I don't want to bring you down with me. Red spreads, that's the trouble with red. Look at fire, look at blood. It gets on everything if you aren't careful. You know about white, it stains so easily.)_

But then there's the question. It hangs there in the air. The matter of _can I kiss you?_ He should say no. He should say no, never, not at all. Crowley swallows and looks up. 

“If you don’t,” he manages, “I might die on the spot.”

Aziraphale nods, eyes widening. His Adam's apple troubling a little, up and down. That _look_ in his eyes (it had been there before, once upon a time in an old world war). That look of want, that look of abject terror. Crowley had not realized, not then, had not known the full extent of it. He knows now. His own hands shake and he holds them clenched against the leather of the sofa. Aziraphale moves first. He bites his lip, nods once. Breathes in. Rounds the edge of the sectional, hip just skimming the corner. Rounds the corner of the table, comes to stand there in front of where Crowley is sitting. In front of this pile of torn-napkin nerves that make up one sweat-necked demon here on the sofa. 

Crowley looks up. Aziraphale doesn't blink. Not this time, not with these Neptune eyes. Let us watch, let us pull back. See the strong hands tilt the angled jaw up, see where the light catches on their skin, on a gold pinky ring, on Crowley's acid-rain-yellow stare. See how gently Aziraphale brushes his own nervous hands to the sides of Crowley's face, a thumb firmly on the chin (feeling the stubble there, a promise of roughness). They don't need to breathe but somehow they both are and breathing wildly, allowing this moment to last too long. It's too much, it's too much, it's too much. 

"Are you certain -"

"Angel, angel, please, you gotta -"

Aziraphale kisses him. Skin to skin, mouth to mouth. Pushing the air back into his lungs. For an instant, Crowley feels nothing but chapped skin on his own. He is both simple and clean, the empty flavor of skin and saliva. His senses return one at a time. First, there is touch. This long ache of need, this near-painful pleasure. The pushpress of lips against his own, the addition and subtraction of where their mouths are, where their hands are. (Here now, there next.) Aziraphale's hands start by cupping his face, turn up into weaving deep into firescald hair. Crowley's hands pull at the cotton shirt, trying to weave his fingers into it, become a part of it. Aziraphale is wearing it and if Crowley can keep his hands there, tied up in him, then he cannot disappear. Cannot fly away. He thinks of brimstone, he thinks of fire. This mouth. On his. Touch. Soft. _I want you I want you I want you. Fuck. (Don't you dare ever leave me again.)_ His heartbeat pulses, held in Aziraphale’s hands. Maybe this is the way the universe works. Maybe it’s just this simple. (Maybe, tell me, maybe we can have this.) 

Taste, taste comes next. _Your mouth tastes like church bells._ Like iron and salt, like a split lip and a bit of blood spilled in. Like dust and water, the rush of wind. (We are made of stardust, this is the taste of stardust.) Smell is next, that ambergris-heavy cologne. That cedar aftershave. Bergamot too, though he can blame the Earl Grey for that. Aziraphale smells nothing like an angel, nothing pure and driven as snow. Just incredibly human, with a human body pressed against him. (Somehow here on top of Crowley now, legs on either side of him, his scald-hot cock pressed there, hard as obsidian against Crowley's stomach. Human-bodied, yes, with human wants.) 

Crowley licks into the rockpool of his mouth, there is a strange keening sound (perhaps it is his own, he'll never know). Aziraphale presses back. Gentle with his teeth but scraping, promising. This yes yes yes, there is more. We know when kisses have an end. We know when they are, instead, a beginning. This one is a prologue and Aziraphale is writing a table of contents on his neck, up into his hairline, with his fingers dipping into his shirt. Crowley hisses there as Aziraphale's fingers come up at the waistline, touch the bare skin of his stomach. 

"Is that alright, my love?"

"Yes, god, it's fucking _alright,_ you absolute tease."

"Nothing teasing," Aziraphale says, a near-smirk on his mouth. That impudent cat's cream smile. "I'm just sampling the menu." 

Crowley groans. "Order anything you'd like."

"I'm a bit peckish," Aziraphale says, pressing his hips in further, pressing against Crowley harder, pulling another sound from his throat. Crowley cannot tell if his eyes are closed or if he's gone blind. It doesn't matter, he doesn't care. Too reduced to pure touch and need and smell and these hands wandering over him, making pilgrimages across his skin. "I'd like it all."

"Then order it all," Crowley whispers, "Anything you want."

It's been raining for so long. This rising water. Drowning isn't a death sentence. It's just this bit of fluid in the lungs. You can drown on seawater and riverwater. On mercury, if you like. You could drown on kerosene or even milk. Influenza victims can drown on their own bile, choked to death by their own sick. Doesn't matter. You can be plucked from the water. Skilled sailors know what to look for. A drowning victim usually doesn't make much noise, they don't flail about (television thinks they do, television is usually wrong). No, they usually go quietly, their heads low to the water, head tilted back and mouths open, eyes unfocused to the sky. We can count drowning from the moment the mouth will not stay above water. It can take awhile, full minutes. You can be conscious the entire time.

He had been drowning. Now this, these hands on his chest, pressing the water from his lungs. This mouth breathing air back into him. This warm body over him, bringing heat back to his cold-damp skin, his waterlogged veins. You can survive a shipwreck, live through a fire. Here, breathe into me. Clear the smoke out of my lungs. Here, catch me in the deep, bring me up into the air. I am outstretched and hungry, desperate for oxygen. Here, laid out in search of the wind.

( _You kissed me. You kissed me, you opened my mouth, you put the taste of yourself there.)_ Aziraphale presses against him, hip to hip. They rub there together like desperate creatures at the end of the world, rutting blindly in the dirt. Bodies sparking together. A bit of flint, a bit of tinder. _I'll be the match if you want to strike. Please please please, god, fuck. Let me have this. Let us have this._

"Come on," Crowley says, his voice roughcaught in his own damn throat. He pulls them up, dragging them half down the hall, running into walls as they try to keep their bodies connected, their mouths still crashing together. 

"You're shaking," Aziraphale says, hands around his arms. They haven't even made it to the bedroom yet. Not fully. Here in this doorway to Crowley's room, the dark open pressing on. It's safe there, it must be. Just a soft bed with greysilk sheets. Just two pillows. You can land there and be safe. Nothing will hurt. 

"Just cold." (This is not a lie. We let each other tell fictions when we both know the truth. It's alright, you can cover yourself with this, you don't have to be naked. You don't have to be seen.) 

"I'll warm you up."

"Might take awhile," Crowley says, laughing under his breath. Shaking still. _I know what you think of me. I know you're wrong. I can watch your eyes, I trust you that you love me. You said it and I trust you, so it must be true. But you'll come around eventually, see the truth. The ragged edges of my undershirt, the waterspots on my wineglass._

Aziraphale kisses his wrist, leans into his neck. Leaves the gift of his mouth there too. Crowley shudders. "Is this okay?" Aziraphale asks, there in that space between his hair and ear. 

_I'll die if we stop._ "Yeah, fucking bloody - yes, angel. Just -" He stares at Aziraphale with wide, dangerous eyes. "Are you certain that it's gonna be - You're an angel, you know, so -"

"I won't Fall," Aziraphale whispers. He's pressed his forehead to Crowley's. He's looking up. Don't count the eyelashes, don't try to memorize this. The goldglint of the mosaic eyes. The slight bend to the nose. The wrinkles and folds there in his soft skin. 

"You gotta promise, Aziraphale, I can't - I can't do that -"

"I love you," Aziraphale says. Crowley closes his eyes. It snakes up his spine, electric and beautiful. This explosion of the most common words in the world (they've never been said to him). “Darling, this. There’s never been anything so holy.”

“Come on, angel.” 

“Trust me, Crowley. Listen to me. This, this is one of ours.”

“You don’t know that -“

"I do. Will you trust me?" Aziraphale asks, brushing his thumb under Crowley's eye. He nods, swallows.

"Have you ever - " Crowley's breath catches on his own ragged lip, there where he's bitten it. "Have you done this before?"

Aziraphale shakes his head, "No, I haven't, not with anyone." He looks up at Crowley, kisses him, pulls back to breathe. "Other than my own curiosity, of course. Hands. Erm - tools, perhaps."

 _God, yes, tell me._ Crowley whines a little. 

"Have you?" Aziraphale asks. 

"No, never." _Just my own hand, pretending it's yours._

 _"Fuck,"_ Aziraphale hisses. 

"Satan, I _love_ the sound of that from you."

Aziraphale grins a bit, white-toothed and soft. "My dear love, tell me what else you love. What else you want."

He closes his eyes, runs his hands up and down Aziraphale's arms. "I want you naked in my bed," he manages. Crowley catches Aziraphale's lip, his hands gripping at Aziraphale's sides. There will be marks later, bruises tomorrow. (No one seems to mind.) "I want to see you."

"Then undress me." 

"Yeah, okay. Bloody hell, yes." Crowley runs his hands over Aziraphale's chest, up the gentle throat, over the chin. His hands in Aziraphale's creamline hair, sinking there into the soil of him like they've always meant to. Like they've always been there. Yes, rustling him and leaving him well-tilled. Aziraphale is in the light. Watch him there. Setting the pocketwatch on the desk, offering that ever-too-self-aware smile. His glass-bottle eyes never leaving Crowley. Crowley peels the waistcoat off first, unbuttoning slowly. Undoes the brown leather belt. _You're so fucking beautiful._ Crowley doesn’t say anything. 

"I want to see you too. You're gorgeous, my love. Did you know that? I've always thought it." 

_Good lord._ So nervous fingers undo stubborn buttons. Aziraphale slips in to help, his skypale hair ever wilder, his eyes brighter. His hips press in between buttons, hard and ruinous. A promise too. (Crowley swallows a moan. He might go off without any more help.) Aziraphale brings his hands up, pushing the black shirt from Crowley's shoulders. _Yes, please, this. Peel slowly and see._

Nervous against the cool bedroom air. Laid out here in this bed, the cotton against his bare back, his naked legs. Naked and afraid. _What do I look like to you? (I don't want to know.)_ Skinny and pale. A ribcage with arms and eelcatch legs. He hates to bare himself, nervous and strange. That's the trouble with human bodies. We collect all these scars, these old memories. We become historians of our own past. If we take our clothes off, we lay ourselves out on the bed like a table of contents. Any scar to be seen, any chapter to be read. Our lovers can look at us, naked and for the offering, say _tell me this one._

"Crowley, please, I want you to - I want to see you."

"What?" Crowley blinks. He's right here, bare as ever. Pressed into Aziraphale's skin. 

"Get your wings out, darling. I haven't seen them since the Garden." 

Crowley swallows, "They're not as bright as yours, angel."

"Please."

(Watch. Stand back. Unfurl your black wings, Crowley. Let them go. All creatures great and small, with crowfeathers and ravenwings too.)

"You're gorgeous," Aziraphale breathes, reaching up to him.

"Angel, stop." 

'I mean it."

"Shut up. Come here."

Aziraphale moves toward him. Covers Crowley's chest with his wide, square hands. Those perfectly-kept nails catching the light. "You're like a raven, you wondrous thing."

"Aziraphale, you don't need - "

"Shh, I want to see you," Aziraphale says. He has wide hands. Wide and deft hands made for turning bookpages, made for nesting in feathers, setting them to rights. _I love you._ (Crowley thinks it often, tries to keep it in. He wants to be calm, collected. Reasonable. There is who we want to be, there is who we really are. The truth of him is that he always carries too much, takes too big of a bite. He's too nervous. He'll drop it all, it will all spill out. Yes, how many times can you say _I love you_ before it gets to be too much? Be careful. Keep steady.) 

But Aziraphale is here with gentle hands. See the way the creases cover his knuckles, see the white-fine dusting of hair across the back. The sunfreckles and the dance of the vein across his tendons. Human-form hands, made to touch. Made to pray, to make love. To pick a plum from a bowl and press into it, find the soft places. (Where to bite, where to swallow.) To place a bandage, wrap it around with loving grace. (See how Aziraphale watches. His smile in his eyes, the fold of his brows. He carries warmth in the lines of his face. It's warmth for you, you can curl up here. You can bask in it. You can take this, you can learn to say thank you.) 

Crowley nods. _Anything you want._ And Aziraphale's hands stroke down his feathers. Smoothing them. Feeling the bones there and the strength, his wide wingspan. "Like a raven. Noah let you loose from the boat. Looking for land. You were the first hope for dry land." _It wasn't me,_ Crowley wants to say. But he presses his mouth together, keeps the moan off his lips as Aziraphale kisses a guiding feather. "You fed Elijah, there when he was hidden."

"The meanest of creatures," Crowley whispers. 

"All God's creatures. Great and small," Aziraphale says, "Solomon had hair like your wings, just as dark. Did you ever meet him? He wrote the most _wonderful_ poetry." 

“Never had the pleasure,” Crowley says, moaning a bit as Aziraphale brings his mouth around to his back, that juncture of bone and feather, where he bursts forth into wing. "Let me see you too," he says, "please."

These broad wings. _Every angel is terrifying,_ Crowley hears in his own mind (an old quote from an old poet), _and yet, alas, I invoke you._ Crowley kisses Aziraphale's soft hips. _This is you. They don’t get to have you. Don’t pack yourself up, don’t put yourself away. I’m sorry. I am so sorry, my love. I shouldn’t have asked you to come back. I know what they said to you. Closed the gates to you. (I shouldn’t have asked you to sit outside them, shouldn’t have asked you to try again, to give them another chance. They don’t deserve you.)_

 _You shouldn’t. You’ll burn yourself._ His hand splayed out on this field of bare skin, counting the freckles between his fingers. Crowley lets his fingers wander. See Aziraphale, this map of skin. Crowley has been everywhere in the world. Mountains and valleys, cliffs and ridges. He's troubled over fractal shores. None of this matters, they've all been interruptions between himself and this bit of skin. He's learned cartography so he could make a map of Aziraphale's back. These freckles and moles. Connect the dots, invent new constellations. Name them. _Yes, let me name your freckles, your birthmarks, your moles. Let me look for them like stars in the sky, the way sailors do to find their way. When I am lost, I will bury myself in you, pull you close. I will look again at you and find my way home._

Firm hands pull a little at red-clay hair. A nip at the tilted jaw. Fresh heat moves down Crowley's spine. _Goddamn, you'll be the death of me. Jesus fucking Christ._ Wild here in the bed, feasting on whatever skin he is offered. Forgetting how his own body is put together. It doesn't matter where his arms are, his legs. It just matters that Aziraphale is pressed against them. 

"Bloody hell, you're gonna - "

"What will I do to you? Tell me." 

" _Ngk_ ," he hisses. Presses his mouth in there, right at the divot of the shoulder. An empty space, somewhere he can make a home for himself in. _I need to taste you. The rockpool oystersalt of you. I've thought about it for years. Lifetimes._ (Crowley always thinks about oysters, remembers the feel of them back in Rome, an angel's temptation. The salt and the wet and he always comes all over his hand, thinking of what Aziraphale would taste like on his own tongue.)

Slip on down, down, down. Crowley starts to slide down Aziraphale's body, pressing him there into the bed. (Loving the way the sheets are displaced, the way the bed dips, this proof that he is not there alone.) He kisses the long stretch of bare skin, the wave of his stomach, the dark coils there, just in the crescent of his hips. "Can I?" He asks here, here with his breath just over Aziraphale's bladesharp cock. Here with the gust of himself from his own lungs moving right over the tip, red and dark. Brutal and needing. Aziraphale moans, hikes himself up on his elbows, staring down at Crowley nestled between his thighs. Staring with gulping wonder. 

"Please, please, _oh -_ " 

Crowley swallows him down, wolfstarved mouth to Aziraphale's cock. Tongue pressing up against him. Aziraphale grips at Crowley's shoulders, hands tangling in his butcher-red hair. Caught there and pulling gently, pushing some. Crowley doesn't stop, doesn't doesn't doesn't. He couldn't, just here with his desperate mouth, starving and finally told to dig in. Aziraphale's cock is fresh-served hot in his mouth. His own fucksteady need pulsing against the bed. He grinds himself into the sheets. Aziraphale tightens his grip, pulls out a moan from Crowley's full mouth. _How are you so good at this? How can you tell what I need? Who taught you the language of my bones, my skin, my body? Where to put your hands, pop my joints from their sockets, cut through the cartilage. How do you know already how to take me apart?_

"Oh _fuck_ ," Aziraphale moans, "You need to - Come _here_ , please." He pulls at Crowley's hair, reaches hot fingers to his jaw, his neck. Slides Crowley up along the long stretch of his bare skin for a kiss, for mouth to mouth. Their push together, hands trying to catch up. Trying to learn everything and all at once. These swells and eddies of their bodies, these collections of softness and jumbled bone-angles too. How many times have they sat together, walked together, dined together and shared only half of their senses? Crowley knows Aziraphale by sight and by sound and stolen-smell, but has never learned touch ( _tell me how soft the skin is, how hot you are in your mouth, between your legs, the feel of you within me, the way you part me like a sea_ ). He has never learned taste ( _the sweat from the nape of your neck, your cock in my mouth, like drowning a little, like getting a splash of the Dead Sea, this saltwet of you_ ). Some of our senses are only offered to lovers. Crowley learns Aziraphale now, a student in the halls of his body. 

"I want you," he says. 

"How?"

"Inside of me, as much as you can."

So Aziraphale is gentle, slipping in gently. This cavern of wings around him, above him, this redwant cock within him, fucking him softly. Aziraphale surrounds him like walls of a cave, like they are building homes for each other out of their sweaty, seeking selves, their simple bodies and scatterstumble hearts rattling in their ribcages (tossed here on a soft bed). It's slow and maddening, the way his eyes roll back, the way his neck falls backward. And no, it's never never never enough.

"Please," Crowley cries, "harder." It isn't enough, it will never be enough. Never never never while he is still left intact, while there is still something left of him after. 

"I don't want to hurt you," Aziraphale says, gasping into his neck, "I can't -"

"You won't, you _won't._ I just need -" Crowley gasps, "I love you, I love you, _I love you,_ please, fuck. Just fuck, fuck, make me feel it. I just want -"

Crowley says _please_ so Aziraphale slams into him. Aziraphale's hands gripping into his shoulders, tight there against the nervous tension, working the lactic acid out by firm hand and by firm fuck. Pulling the nervous ache out like pulling out bent feathers from a broken wing. His hands across Crowley's chest, at the upper arms, the neck and jaw. _Dig in, please. Use your nails. Get it all out of me. It's there, cut it out of me, this ancient ache. That's how you treat a wound (I'm an old healer, I should know). Cut off the infection, the dead skin. Once the wound is clean, it can heal. Grind me, crush me. Ruin me, please. Yes, here, into the bed. The sheets are replaceable, I want you deep in me until you're nestled into my liver, my spleen, tucked up into my vertebrae and my ribs. There will be nothing between our blood but a bit of skin, that's all. Leave me a stain here, my blood and spit. I don't have rose petals for you, you can use me instead. If you like. Grind me, yes, fuck, like that, into pulp and stain. Nothing but my beating heart, your name carved there on my spine. (I'll be sure it's safe, I swear. I swear, I absolutely swear. I'll sand my teeth down myself, my very fangs. There's nothing sharp here.)_

Someone moans. It echoes off the greycave walls, the shale and limestone-grey place he has carved out here for himself in Mayfair. This bed is not lichen nor moss but linen and cotton. There are no dripstone stalactites, no spiking stalagmites, just this. A bed and a side table, a stainless steel lamp. No rug on the floor, no art on the walls. A long window with no curtains, baring the night to them. Nothing, just this slamshot of themselves on the bed, Crowley's legs hooked there behind Aziraphale, his arms around his neck, keeping them pressed in one constant kiss. One constant knot of the two of their bodies, tied up and tangled. Finding no end and no beginning. 

"Oh fuck," Crowley hisses, hard and sharp between them. He pulls one of Aziraphale's hands there, curling it around his redwant dick. Moving the other's hand over the saltwet of himself, just like that, yes, just the way he likes it. 

Aziraphale kisses him harder, gripping him tight and moaning into his mouth. "Darling, can I?"

"God, yeah, fuck, please - " Crowley blasphemes, pulling Aziraphale tightpress against his chest as he comes, somewhere there inside of him. Somewhere there, safe and warm and loved loved loved by wanting arms.

"You love me," Aziraphale whispers then, collapsed on top of him. Whispers _love_ and so Crowley kisses him. Aziraphale’s lips are kiss-swollen and soft. Like a bruised plum under his mouth, gently rolled across the surface and waiting to be bitten. 

"Yeah, I told you that." _Been telling you that for years._ Crowley goes red on his cheekbones, across the nose. Flushes more than when Aziraphale had first pushed the shirt from him, unbuttoned his jeans, undone his belt. (We're more naked in love.)

"It's just still a wonder to hear, my dear." _I'll keep telling you. How much? More than all the kingdoms of the world. How long? Until the end and back to the start again._ "I want to keep you," Aziraphale says. 

"So keep me." _Please, I'm yours. You have me._ (Crowley wonders, he doesn't understand. Maybe he never will. How can things have shifted? He still has the same mud on his boots. He hasn't looked at the sky since Aziraphale had returned. The same lint in his pockets, the same spit in his mouth. Tell me how the world can change so much so fast.)

Those bright eyes. Blue as the innermost part of a flame, this pale fire. "Will you permit me something terribly human?"

"Keep touching me," Crowley grits, "And I'll give you an engraved invitation."

Aziraphale laughs. He leans back, pulling his hands along Crowley's ribs as he does. Knocking his air out, tracing down his hips. He keeps one hand on Crowley and reaches behind himself, pulling out a feather from his own wing. Long, yes, and white. White as a cloud, Abraham's beard. Sea-froth. 

"Give me your hand." 

"Sure," Crowley says, offering it up. Take the long fingers, take the creased knuckles. The scatter-copper hair. The vein that dances over the tendons, the hollow of his wrist. Hangnails and all. Aziraphale kisses the top of his hand and Crowley watches. There is a carefulness to the movements. The way Aziraphale presses his mouth to each knuckle. The way he does to the veinnest of the wrist. Then the feather again. Crowley stares. Aziraphale wraps the feather around a finger. Closes his eyes. Concentrates.

Crowley's hand feels cool metal against it. Silver in the light. 

"If that's alright," Aziraphale says. He is peach in the face. His blush mottled across his chest. "It's silver and tin. If it's too much, of course, then we needn't at all. I only thought -"

" _Fuck,_ angel, yeah, that's fucking _alright._ " _You can put anything you like on me. Mark me, make me yours. I want everyone to see it. You could write your name on me with a quill of you. A pen made of your bone, a feather. Give me this, wear something from me. This ring made of your living body._ He grips Aziraphale’s shoulders, slides up to the back of his neck. Pulls him down again, mouth against mouth. Heart against heart, ribs interlocking in the spaces they bare. _Do you know how I love you? Let me show you._

This knock of them together. Aziraphale gasps as Crowley digs his fingers in, pulling at his sides. _Get closer, come closer._

“Closer,” Crowley murmurs. (Perhaps in English, perhaps not. He isn’t sure.)

“Keep going,” Aziraphale whispers. “You can get closer.”

Electricity wires up his spine. Crowley presses his lips to Aziraphale’s ear, the heat of his own breath bouncing back at him. “How close then?” _How close? Tell me. Tell me out loud. In words. I need to hear you say it. Invite me, invite me in. Offer me a drink of you. (I’ve been surrounded by saltwater for so long. Please.)_

“Darling, please, _please_ just fuck me.”

" _Fuck_ , angel," Crowley mutters, "Yeah, okay. Yeah, absolutely." 

We can make a prayer with our hands together. It doesn't have to be my two hands, your two hands. Our chests, our hips, our legs. Our bodies pushed here, against each other. How are we not giving thanks? Crowley curls up into Aziraphale, legs tangling in those firm thighs. _God, I want you. I want to devour you. I want you to taste me, I want to get stuck between your teeth._ He ties himself up into a knot. King Solomon's knot. Two closed loops. (Two legs, two arms.) There is no end and no beginning. Why is it a surprise that this endless knot, this way that we cannot tell where one of us starts and the other ends, that it might also be called a lover's knot? (Have we ever felt more immortal than here, buried in each other, tasting Eden in each others' mouths?) 

It's too much, it's too much. This feedback, this dissonance. The catastrophe of Aziraphale and he together. He's shaking, rattling. Pills in a bottle, a dish knocked off a shelf. He's the black ice and the car too, crashing into the median, into a brick wall. The shattered glass of the windshield, the bent metal. Red of blood and scraped paint. _Tell me this is okay, please, don't let me be too much. Too fast._

 _"More,"_ Aziraphale moans in absolution, hips rising up off the bed. This filthy brilliance, this coarse wonder. (Crowley aches at being wanted, at having hands pulling him in. The idea of it, the idea of being desired, of being something to love, something to yearn for. Something to say _be careful with that, I don't want it to break._ ) He can still taste Aziraphale in his mouth. A little oyster-salt, a little mulberry-sweet. He shudders, his hips crash harder.

"Crowley, the bed -"

" _Fuck_ the fucking bed," Crowley hisses, his tongue between his teeth, the tendons of his neck straining. The hollows of his skinny shoulders bare and obvious with his tight grip on Aziraphale. Aziraphale moans, kicking his head back ( _the way you did once in Rome, swallowing an oyster, do you remember?_ ), his legs wrapping tighter around Crowley. 

The bed creaks and whines. The edges of it splinter. Something shatters and half the mattress falls on the floor. Crowley doesn't care, Aziraphale doesn't seem to notice. His eyes still slamshut tight and that aching sound high in his throat. That breath-heavy _yes yes yes good god, fuck me, I love you, please._

He comes blindly hard, his scattershot hips stuttering and his hands gripping into Aziraphale. The two of them crying out together and the world goes white here, here where it might be the end of the world. White behind his eyelids, white in his mind. Pushing into white heat. Torn open and pulling all of Aziraphale's colors in to mix with his red-orange and this is how light mixes, we all of us together make white light. 

"I love you, I love you, _I love you, I -_ "

White light, white light, and white heat too.

* * *

(Let us pitch forward. This is the privilege of stories, we are not bound by time, not lashed by space. Come.)

_A Cottage in the South Downs  
_ _2030_

There is a small cottage set here, slightly back from the road. It is a white ramble and red-shuttered. Wildflowers climb up to the fences, to the back garden and the path. Buttercups, yes, and blue speedwell too. Look up, look past, look to the rolling downs themselves. Hills of summer-ripe wheat, gold in the sun. Hills of blue flax, hills of red-petaled poppies. (Roll in them, if you like. Not all stains are terrible, not all things must stay clean. When you see the poppy-crush red on you later, remember when we laid together out in the flowers under the sun.) Just down the path, there is a pasture of green grass and cowslips, of yellow rattle. Of idle sheep, marked by farmers' paint, nosing in the stems. 

No one is watching. No one looks in the window here, no one creeps up to the kitchen to glance in. The world is quiet here, only a little river that babbles. Only the sound of the leaves. The wind here (this lone watcher, this lone listener, this answerer of an unforgivable prayer). This is where the wind gathers, out on the downs, spun out across the open sea. Sometimes, when Crowley wakes, it takes a moment for him to remember where he is. He blinks away swirling gases and stardust. Old memories of another time. (He had spent so long as a starmaker, so much longer than this. Sometimes it's easy to think this is nothing, only a dream.) 

He is not in Mayfair and this is the rosy-fingered dawn. When he opens his eyes, the walls are dove grey. When he opens his eyes (today, yes, and every day), there are still arms over him. This gentletouch of Aziraphale's hand skating over Crowley's bare back. Over the shoulder blades, over the boneflesh wings of his human body. It is early morning and the dawn is spilling through his long bedroom windows, falling over them without even asking first. It doesn't matter, it's a big bed, there's room enough for the two of them and for the sunlight too. 

There are rituals in the morning. Crowley shifts out from beneath Aziraphale's arm, kissing the knuckles as he goes. Brushes his long-fingered hand against Aziraphale’s soft shoulder, wrapped in this pajama button-down, striped in blue and white. He yawns, pulls his red-clay hair back. Walks barefoot to the kitchen, cold tile on his feet. Sun coming through the curtains. Put the kettle on, start the eggs. There are more ways to say I love you than in words. This is how you say it in the morning. Sunny-side-up and with toast and black currant jam. With a kiss pressed to the side of the face when Aziraphale walks in, blinking and sleepsoft. 

"Mornin', angel," Crowley says, tilting his head to the side, hair falling across his shoulder.

"You should come back to bed, I think."

"Do you now?"

"I do, my love."

"Anything you like, angel," Crowley says, leaning to kiss Aziraphale. To feel the heat of him through the thin fabric of his pajamas. He wonders how thin the fabric is. Wonders if he pulled it tight across Aziraphale's hips if he could see the red-deep of his cock there, trapped. Outlined. 

_Why is your body so fascinating? Why is it as beautiful to me as a stormcloud? As a forest fire? You have the same eyes, the same bones, the same skin. You are built from the same building blocks as I am, atoms, yes, and starstuff too. Why are you always a labyrinth to me, something to be explored? Let me wind down the curves and twists of you, taking my little thread, unwinding it so I might find my way back out. (But you are holding the other end. There is no end to this eternal knot. Let me go deeper into you.) This garden. The wind. A dove calls. A raven too, taking off to never return. They've found land. What are we waiting for? Here’s my hand outstretched, I’m waiting for you. There’s nothing of reason in this world, nothing but you and I. There’s no kingdom to come. We have no one to check in with after, Come here, let me love you in open water._

Sometimes there are wings. Most days (today) there are not. Just these terribly human bodies and their rumpled sheets, the duvet kicked off and falling on the floor. Just Crowley and his cartographer's hands smoothing over Aziraphale's wide back, feeling the measure of softness. Sounding the depths. Kissing the shoulder blades. The scapulae. This bonework, these too-human wings. There had been fires once. There are fires still. Fires to lick you, taste you, melt your skin and your bones. Take your house apart. Fire, fire everywhere. We are not done with burning things. We are not done with the sky. Let's go past, past the atmosphere. The sun hung up there in the firmament, this ball of radiant heat. The stars. Crowley and his sparktouch fingers, who had been an angel once, who had worn a form before it had been anything like this. He had not been skin and bone then, had not had fingers, toes. A mouth. It was different then, so long ago when the Universe was young. He'd worn a different body, yes, and a different name. Not-yet-Crowley had been the size of galaxies. Had stretched out and pointed with his sparktouch and put the stars where he wanted, spun the galaxies into spirals, breathed the nebulas into being. 

Crowley is a gardener. He looks up out the window. His hair spilled out on the pillow like cooling magma. Warm. Like poppies too. Aziraphale tucked into one arm, the soft hair against his chin, his nose. Out the window, there is the sun. Hanging in the black, this ball of helium and hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. He had hung it there, long before there was Creation, long before there was Earth. He hadn't known then that this light would be the first he would see Aziraphale in. That they would lay here together, quiet and breathing softly in this star of his own making.

Love is always a happy ending. It doesn't matter how we close the book. If we have forever, if we do not. We are time immortal with our hands holding each other in Solomon's endless knots. It doesn't matter. We must look at spacetime. These moments where I loved you will last forever, whether or not we stay in them. These moments where you loved me back. It doesn't matter what cover we bind ourselves with, if the rains come, if the dove finds land. All that matters is that you stood here with me, this little boat. Came up the mountain. You, suddenly, the very sun over the cliffs. An interruption of light. Let us love forever, we have these moments here. We may not stay in them, our consciousness moves on. But the universe has different rules, time is not bound to us. All moments are immortal. These moments where we loved each other best, here in this soft bed. Here with flat-leaf parsley and handpicked thyme. Yes, these, they will last. 

_At last, at last, at last. Hallelujah._ Yes, here we are. I have found you. 

Let there be light.

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted with permission.


End file.
